Social bookmarking is a means for Internet users to store and manage links, or "bookmarks", to their favorite Web pages, much like using Favorites or Bookmarks features in an Internet browser.
Like favorites or traditional bookmarks, in social bookmarking users save links to Web pages they want to remember and/or share. A user's bookmarks can be saved publicly (for all to see) or privately and shared only with other designated users or groups. Those allowed to view private bookmarks can view them in a variety of ways.
Examples of Social Bookmarking Sites
Popular social bookmarking sites include Digg, Propeller, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Yahoo Buzz and others. These social bookmarking sites allow users to submit links to Web pages and have others vote whether they like or dislike the page the link points to. Pages that receive the highest number of votes within a category get promoted to the front page for that category on the social bookmarking site. Getting front page attention in a major social bookmarking site can result in large influxes of traffic to the submitted Web page,as subscribers to the bookmarked pages visit them to see if they want to give them their vote.
Once social bookmarks are created, the various social bookmarking sites offer different ways for users to categorize and search their existing bookmarks and the public bookmarks of others. The most common type of organization system for social bookmarks (in addition to already established categories) is the addition of tags or labels to each page.
Because of the potential popularity of a bookmarked page that receives a lot of votes, social bookmarking is often used as a website promotion technique to build traffic to a website.
I saw a very interesting home business article on the Web the other day so I submitted it to Yahoo Buzz, a social bookmarking site, so I could share the article publicly with others who might be interested.
