Computer Technology

Social Bookmarking vs. Browser Bookmarking

Bookmarking!! It's what a lot of you students already do - you find a page you really like that you want to go back to often. You "Bookmark" the page on your browser so that next time you want to go to that website, all you have to do it click your bookmark. It's just that easy!

What is a bookmarking menu? What is a bookmarks toolbar? For heavens sakes - what is bookmarking? Take a look at this 3 minute screencast to learn the answers to these 3 questions:






Here's a picture of my firefox browser, with my bookmarks toolbar set up with all the sites that I go to on a regular basis:
*note - you don't have to use firefox to bookmark! You can use bookmarking with any browser.


So... have you ever heard of social bookmarking sites, like digg.com, delicious.com, and stumbleupon.com??

Go to this website and watch the fun 3-minute video called "Social Bookmarking in plain english" to understand what social bookmarking really is: http://www.commoncraft.com/bookmarking-plain-english



Since there are SO MANY websites out there, social bookmarking provides a vital function as a filter. Social bookmarking filters through tons of websites, so that when you and I are ready to go read about something interesting, we don't have to go read 10 lame sites before reading 1 good one.

You saw in the "Bookmarking in plain english" video what delicious is capable of. I use www.digg.com everyday just to keep myself aware of what's going on in the world, as well as read about things that interest me.

I took a screenshot of the digg science section today (see below). Articles that people have submitted appear in a list. You can click on the articles and digg will take you straight to the website. If you like the article, you can "Digg" it by clicking on the "digg it" button on the left. The more diggs an article has received, the bigger the digg number next to the article. Personally, I like to click on articles that a lot of people have dugg because I know the article will be good.




Also, I don't even submit articles to digg. One time I did when I submitted an article I read about Harry Potter and the "Ron is Dumbledore" theory (this was before the 7th book came out - just FYI). Well, it only got 14 diggs and so it didn't make it to the main page. I just go to digg every day and read about what other people think is interesting.

Check this digg out:
When the popular movie actor Heath Ledger died, someone posted the article on digg. So many people dugg the article that it shot straight up to the top article in the entertainment category. Very quickly after Heath died, many people knew about it because of social bookmarking sites like digg.com.



So have you learned why you might want to use a social networking site to gather information as opposed to just doing research yourself and bookmarking pages in your own browser?