I have always been amazed by the way, web 2.0 has changed the way we look at the internet these days. Gone and forgotten are the days when we would visit the web to search & look for static information. Here we are in exciting times where the users are not only consuming content but are also busy generating it. Look at the way the likes of facebook, orkut, flickr, blogger, have become part & parcel of the daily lives of an average computer literate citizen. Among all the nice features, they provide an opportunity for us to create our own personalized content (in form of photos, videos, articles). They also enable us to share the content & connect with our friends, extending our social life activities beyond the confinement of weekends, festivals & government holidays!
One more such powerful tool for content sharing which I am going to write about, is this Social Bookmarking. As the name itself suggests, this is a tool intended for bookmarking our favourite websites.
Well, it is just not that.. There is more to it.
Let me try to explain the benefits from the perspectives of the two user types on the web:-
1.Content Consumer
2.Content Publisher
Content Consumer
• Firstly, it provides a facility to store our bookmarks on the web thereby allowing access anytime / anywhere.
• Secondly, it allows us to share our bookmarks publicly ! This way, our friends, family, our colleagues can read / know what we share
• Third, we can find other people on the web who have interesting bookmarks and add their links to our own collection
There are a few more interesting features provided by some of the popular social bookmarking tools :-
-> Tags:
With a traditional bookmark, we can only save the URL in a user defined folder. But with tagging a bookmark, we can identify the bookmark with the help of more than one indicator which makes it easier for quicker & more relevant retrieval.
Usage of Tagging can go even further when someone else posts related content using the same tags. We can build a collaborative repository of related information, driven by personal interests and creative organization.
-> Judgment of content quality
Well, we all know for any subject a big heap of content is available on the web. But, which one to pick for a quick read? Some tools provide a facility for the users to vote based on the quality of content. More the votes, better the quality. This way, the content consumer community on the web acts as the collective judge for a content and guide us to good quality content.
-> Groups/Networks
Some Tools provide facility to create a group a network of our friends with whom we want to explicity share our bookmarks with and also would like to know what their choices are.
Content Publisher
I think the first & foremost advantage for a content publisher is the organic advertising platform these social bookmarking tools provide. If the content quality is good, it attracts more and more consumers to add it to their bookmarks and thereby share it publicly leading to viral publicity.
Sites like Addtoany, addthis, sharethis.com provide wrapper-like widgets which act as a single point source for many social bookmarking sites. These widgets display social bookmarking chicklets (little icons) which can be easily be incorporated into one’s website. I have added one in my site too! Check it out J
Social Bookmarking for the Enterprise
After knowing about these benefits of social bookmarking tools on the internet, a very obvious question which came to my mind was whether we have any tools exclusively for the company intranet !
A tool such as this would help & boost the Knowledge Management activities in a company.
I tried to search for social bookmarking sites for enterprises on the web i.e. a tool which can be easily embedded into enterprise intranet webserver, but unfortunately, I am yet to locate such a tool… [BTW, IBM has developed its own social bookmarking tool for enterprise named DoGear.]
Finally there are probably dozens of bookmarking sites to choose from like delicious, digg, stumbleupon, google bookmarks, facebook, furl etc. So, choose one and get started!
Friends, this is what I have researched on this topic till now and wrote it down as I have understood it.
Hope this was useful. Would be glad to hear from you.
-Srinivas Murthy G
