The success of the "social" web applications is undeniable. Social networking sites like Facebook, Bebo or YouTube have reached success and fame in the past & present. Now followed by social bookmarking websites as they are becoming more and more praised by internet users.
Why create such a buzz around these websites? Let us give you a brief overview and the reasons why you should be in it to win it!

What is Social Bookmarking?

Social bookmarking is an online tool which allows people to organize, rate and share their favorite sites on the Internet. Categorize favorite sites using tags, which describe the content of the website. Other people who are interested in the same subject can browse through this selection, based on the recommendation and choose to bookmark the page themselves. The web application often allows users to store links (bookmarks- hence the name ), share and search a web page location (URL), web page address or a file name. All of  these lists of online resources can be made accessible to the public. That is why it is called " social " bookmarking site. These bookmarks can be private or shared. To get your own social bookmarking storage - simply register to one of the website below.

List  of Social Bookmarking  websites

• Blue Dot
• del.icio.us
• Digg
• Diigo 
• Furl
• GiveALink.org
• Ma.gnolia   
• My Web  
• Netscape  
• Netvouz (Allows both tags and folders for organizing bookmarks.)   
• Newsvine
• Reddit
• Shoutwire  
• Simpy   
• SiteBar (SiteBar bookmark server is open source software)   
• StumbleUpon
• Thoof

A bit of Social Bookmarking History

The idea of sharing internet bookmarks was born in April 1996 with the launch of the first social bookmarking website itList.com. The market flourished in three years and websites like Backflip, Blink, Clip2, hotlinks and quiver enter in the competition. But this first generation of social bookmarking software didn't have a viable money making model behind it. Many failed especially with the dotcom bubble gone burst in 2001. In 2005 and 2006, a second generation of social bookmarking site like Del.ici.ous, Simpy and  furl rushed into the social software market, followed by Diigo, Ma.gnolia, Netvouz and Stumbleupon. Latest members  to the family are websites like Reddit, Digg, Newsvine, the Uncut Times and Netscape. Recently IBM have revealed plans to enter this market and even the traditional BBC has added social bookmarking links for its news and sports articles.

Social Bookmarking: a  small web revolution!

This a new way to discover the web. It is a big innovation in the area of searching for information online. Compared to the traditional system using a search engine, social bookmarking sites have a great advantage: The categorization of the bookmarks is made by humans who understand the content of the pages they have listed (or so we hope), unlike to the search engines which are using algorithms to rate  & store the content of web sites. The result pages are ranked by the number of users or the times the keyword searched has appeared on the resource.

The importance of Social Bookmarking sites for Search Engine optimisation!

These Social Bookmarks are a nice "Add-On" for every companies Internet Marketing Strategy. It is all about traffic -and your online bookmarks again generate links which can potentially bring traffic to the website. Furthermore social bookmarking sites are highly considered by search engines because they are seen as reliable and recommended websites - human edited.

Create your account and start digging!