While social bookmarking sites are a great way to organize your bookmarks and take your bookmarks with you to work or to a friend's house, this is just a small part of a much bigger puzzle. Social bookmarking also allows you to find websites that will interest you.
The Internet is, after all, pretty big. There is an estimated fifty million unique websites and somewhere between thirty and sixty billion unique web pages. So, if your goal is to start at the beginning and reach the end, it is probably going to take a while.
So, how do we filter through all the rubbish to find the good stuff? The same way we know what movie to go see, or which book we might like to read. We rely on other people to recommend sites to us.
Unfortunately, the web is a little unwieldy in conversation. Can you imagine saying, "Hey, have you been to dubya dubya dubya dot the onion dot com slash content slash A M V O slash rove underscore new underscore newsweek underscore columnist?"
We can talk about basic websites in conversation, but it gets a little difficult to recommend a specific page over the phone, and trying to vocalize every page we find interesting would be the stuff of nightmares.
Social bookmarking allows us to do this without straining our voices. The great part is that we aren't limited to just sending websites to friends and family, we can also meet new people that share our interests.
How To 'Meet' People On Social Bookmarking Sites
It might sound strange, the idea of meeting people on the web. And, perhaps, the word 'meet' isn't entirely accurate. A more accurate description might be "become familiar with" as in: you know they exist, and have made special note of their existence.
In terms of social bookmarking, becoming familiar with other users and adding them to your friends list can be an invaluable tool in finding websites that interest you. Just as a friend might recommend a good book or movie, a social bookmarking friend can lead you to good websites.
So, how do you go about it?
By searching through the public bookmarks. As you find interesting websites, make note of the user who added the bookmark to the site. You can view their profile, and browse through other bookmarks they have added. If their interests are aligned with yours, and you like the sites they have bookmarked, add them as a friend.
Once you have built up a network of friends, you will have a resource to help you find good websites. If you've done a good job of picking these friends, you can think of them as that friend whose recommendations you actually trust, as opposed to that fellow that keeps recommending really bad movies.
In this way, social bookmarking can help you tackle those sixty billion web pages and find those pages that are of particular interest to you.
