Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize,search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help ofmetadata.
In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that theywant to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, and can besaved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, shared only insidecertain networks, or another combination of public and private domains. Theallowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category ortags, or via a search engine.
Most social bookmark services encourage users to organize their bookmarks withinformal tags instead of the traditional browser-based system of folders,although some services feature categories/folders or a combination of foldersand tags. They also enable viewing bookmarks associated with a chosen tag, andinclude information about the number of users who have bookmarked them. Somesocial bookmarking services also draw inferences from the relationship of tagsto create clusters of tags or bookmarks.
Many social bookmarking services provide web feeds for their lists ofbookmarks, including lists organized by tags. This allows subscribers to becomeaware of new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users.
As these services have matured and grown more popular, they have added extrafeatures such as ratings and comments on bookmarks, the ability to import andexport bookmarks from browsers, emailing of bookmarks, web annotation, andgroups or other social network features. |
