Microsoft has launched a preview of their latest attempt at social bookmarking called, simply enough, Social Bookmarks. This will be Microsoft's third attempt at social bookmarking in the last few years with the company already striking out with Tagspace and Listas.

Tagspace, which went into beta in late 2006, was a social bookmarking tool set to compete with the likes of Del.icio.us and Ma.gnolia. Perhaps because it was entering an already-crowded area, Tagspace never made it off the ground.

Listas is a tool similar to Clipmarks. It allows the user to clip a piece of the web and save it. But Microsoft made a big mistake with Listas by having it require Internet Explorer. Microsoft's browser has seen its market share slip in the past few years, so requiring Internet Explorer is a good way to lose almost half your potential customers.

This time around, Microsoft seems to be taking aim at the technical crowd. Microsoft Social Bookmarks is presented alongside the Microsoft Developer Network as a tool to help techies save bookmarks. A smart move considering social bookmarking is already a crowded marketplace.

But Microsoft Social Bookmarks doesn't add anything new to social bookmarking that is not already being done by every other social bookmarking site, which will make it a difficult sell to anyone already using one of those services.

What's more, the performance was surprisingly poor. I understand that it is still essentially in beta, and ordinarily I would overlook bugs and performance issues. But, if you are showing your social bookmarking tool to the public, it should be able to actually load the bookmarks without waiting around for several seconds.

If this is an area that Microsoft has their mind set on competing in, they have their work cut out for them.