The term Social Bookmarking was first coined by del.icio.us in 2003. The concept of social bookmarking revolves around the common interest shared by a group of people. This social bookmarking simply means sharing interesting articles or sites found by someone by using services provided in the internet.
Since del.icio.us took off promoting social bookmarking, more and more people are getting involved in its service and sharing and bookmarking more and more sites. Social bookmarking has grown significantly that if one of your article or pages is found in these bookmarking sites; this specific page has some prestige in the net. Moreover, if the site keeps getting more and more recommendation, it will be shown more often and lead to more and more visitor.
Some very popular bookmarking sites are as follow:
- del.icio.us
- digg
- stumble upon
- technorati
- google bookmarks
- and many others
Due to its popularity, these social bookmarking site has some advantages to the eye of search engine spiders. Even without search engines jumping in, through social bookmarking, people can easily find some high quality sites through these services. Even better, with Stumble Upon and its concept of stumbling; user can easily press a button and a random page suggested by other users will be loaded in their browser window. This service has also gain interest lately (I have been using it day in day out to relieve my boredom) and some hidden internet gems are uncovered through this service.
Drawback of social bookmarking and how it is being misused
Nowadays, internet marketers use these social bookmarking tools to promote their sites since these services attract a flock of highly targeted consumers. Some of these people are even paying incentives for people to get their site submitted to user's bookmark page.
Some other people actually created new registration IDs on these social sites specifically to bookmark and promotes their own sites. This become somewhat spammish if the service or product offered is not really worth the time.
When and why I do not mind the misuse of social bookmarking
Although socially bookmarking your site through offering incentive is not a really fair way of playing things, I personally would not mind if the service or product is of quality and actually draws people interest. Anyway, no matter how much incentives being offered, great quality sites will always get more suggestion through social bookmarking simply by the sheer amount and quality the content provides.
What do you think personally? would you go as far as creating several IDs simply for promoting your site? would you actually offer incentives for people to bookmark your site? why and why not?
Popularity: 8% [?]
