Social Bookmarking

 

Social bookmarking is a "way to store, organize, search and manage bookmarks of web pages on the internet" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_bookmarking). Social bookmarking sites, such as Del.icio.us, allow users to save favorite sites and share those sites with everyone or a select group of people. These sites work just like using the "favorites" button in internet explorer but the main advantage to using a web-based bookmarking site is you can access your favorite sites from any computer with an internet connection. This You Tube video on social bookmarking helps explain the benefits of social bookmarking also.

 

There are many social bookmarking sites available, most free of charge. I had been using Porta-Portal. Porta-Portal works much like Del.icio.us except it doesn't give the count of others who have also booked that site or allow you to see what others are bookmarking. The main feature in Porta-Portal I like is you can organize your sites so when you log in everything is already in categories instead of having to search tags. I'm a very visual person so having it all laid out where I can easily see my sites is helpful for me. Another reason I (and several of my co-workers) use Porta-Portal is because it is not blocked on our school's network; Del.icio.us is unfortunately.

 

In Del.icio.us there are several features that can help the user. One feature is when you save a site you can enter tags. A tag is a way to organize your information. When you want to search for specific sites you can type in your tag words. Based on the tags you've entered, Del.icio.us will pull up all the websites that match your tags. Instead of having to scroll through all of your saved sites, entering tag words can find your information fast.

 

The numbers to the right of your bookmarks are the number of users who also have that site marked. The advantage to this is because Del.icio.us is public, or social, you can see what others have bookmarked. For example, if you have a site bookmarked it is possible that the people who also have the site bookmarked share the same interests as you. By looking at their bookmarks you may find new and interesting sites you hadn't previously heard of.

 

The subscription feature is another way to see what others are bookmarking based on your tags. For example if architecture is one of your tags, as others tag sites with architecture it will alert you. This is another easy way to learn about sites without having to search all the sites yourself. If you don't like the site you can delete it from your bookmarks.

 

I think social bookmarking sites are great. I love that I can access my saved links from anywhere. Del.icio.us is a great site however, I will probably continue to use Porta-portal because I'm already familiar with it and I can access it from my work. I don't use social bookmarking for my classes but I do use it with my co-workers. As I mentioned before several teachers that I work with have Porta-Portal accounts. You can access each others accounts as a guest. It's been nice for sharing sites that we think would benefit each other. I can see how this could be used in my classroom. I could bookmark sites that I want students to use. However, on my current class website I already have a page with links for students to use so this may be a bit redundant.