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We all spend more and more time on the Internet, whether we're researching, looking for work, or just browsing for fun. While we're browsing, we often find resources that we don't want to look at now, but which may be useful later. In the old days, the best way of keeping track of these sites was to keep a list using bookmarks or favourites. There were (and still are) lots of bookmark managers and browser tools to help keep track of the hundreds and thousands of links people amassed. But with all the Web 2.0 technologies out there, offline bookmark managers are no longer as useful. There's now a much better way of keeping track of all those web pages you intend to read. Enter social bookmarking.

How Does Social Bookmarking Work?

Social bookmarking is a way of bookmarking the sites/posts you like on a website. These bookmarks are usually public, hence the 'social', and they also allow other users to comment on the links you have saved. Social bookmarking is a way of showing what interests you share with the rest of webkind. Some of the best known sites include Blinklist, Blogmarks, del.icio.us, Furl, Kaboodle, ma.gnolia, Simpy , Spurl and Wink, to name just a few.

Other sites which work on a similar basis are reddit and digg, though are intended primarily for submitting stories of interest rather than as a bookmarking tool to track your web life. Some sites, such as Blinklist, allow you to keep bookmarks private - this makes those sites a good permanent replacement for offline bookmarks. After all, you only need bookmarks when you're online.

Getting The Best From Social Bookmarking

The key to using social bookmarking is tagging. Tagging is using single words or phrases (separated by commas or spaces) to describe the links you are posting. The trick with tags is to keep them simple, so that the words you use can apply to many things. To tag this article, for example, you could use tags such as 'tagging', 'bookmarking' or, if you wanted to save it for later 'toread'. Tags don't all have to be words in common use, but using multipurpose tags will make it easier to find information when you search.

Another way to make social bookmarking more useful is to use the notes or comments fields when tagging pages. Some services automatically put an excerpt of the page. If they don't, use the comments field for that purpose. It's also useful to include notes on why that page was worth tagging.

Retrieving Information

All social bookmarking sites have a list or cloud of the tags created by users - and each user has an individual page with his or her own tags. Just click on the cloud to see all the pages tagged with a particular label. To do a more complex search, put the terms you want into the search box (for example 'freelance+writing') and all the items with both tags will appear. There's usually a list of related tags as well, so you might find a few things you'd forgotten about. Watch out for typos, though, as these can really mess up the filing system.

Social bookmarking is a great way of keeping track of information. Writers, researchers and publishers may find it particularly useful. Social bookmarking is also a way of bringing additional traffic to a website as there are many users who look at the 'what's new' page and decide what to click on.

So give social bookmarking a try. Once you've got used to this way of working, static bookmarks will be a thing of the past!

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