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Social Bookmarking
Have you ever spent too much time searching your browser folders for that website you needed now? Doesn't it get frustrating when after a lengthy search, you realized you bookmarked the site on a different computer? There are so many sites for writing, publishers, and editors. Maintaining organization and access regardless of what computer you are on, there is a high need for a tool that helps. Social bookmarking is the solution.
Social bookmarking is a method of saving bookmarks to a website. Then, you can use any computer because your bookmarks are saved online. But wait, it gets better. Throw out the "folders" concept for organizing bookmarks. Tag each website with multiple labels (tags) so they can be associated with a number of topics. You can publicly share bookmarks or you can keep them private -- for your eyes only. Social bookmarking enables you to search other's bookmarks based on search tags, such as writers or writing. Delicious is one of many social bookmarking sites.
A. Learn how social bookmarking works
B. Understand tagging
C. Reflect on Thing 13 on your blog
Learn how social bookmarking works
Review this video for a better understanding of Social Bookmarking. Video: Social Bookmarking in Plain English
Read the article, 7 Things You Should Know.. About Social Bookmarking, to learn more.
Understand tagging
You used tags, or keyword searches, in previous Things. For example, in searches on Technorati (blogs), Flickr (photo searches and tagging), and Youtube (videos). Tagging is assigning keywords or “tags” to online content such as bookmarks and pictures. When creating a photo album or scrapbooking, lables are stuck to the pages. Also with organizing files or other physical objects that we want to be able to find and retrieve quickly. The same is done for digital media such as web links, blog posts, photos, or other user-generated content. You can assign multiple tags to a single object when it serves several purposes. I might list a writer's website because of its resources and writing ideas. My tags could be resources and writingideas. Tagging is a critical way digital media is sorted, saved, searched, and shared today.
Other terms you might explore include:
- folksonomy - directly reflects the vocabulary of the users
- tag cloud - a visual representation of a collection of tags with font size representing frequency of use
Reflect - Blog Prompts for Thing 13
Share your thoughts about tagging. Is tagging a useful way to organize your digital resources and why? What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages? What is important to think about before assigning tags to bookmarks or other Internet content?
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