Social Bookmarking Sites

Stephanie Haile enjoys teaching new people to the Internet how tonavigate and become comfortable with their computers. She is a businessowner, wife, mom, pet lover, blogs and social networks buff, videogamer, and beach enthusiast who writes, reads, and helps others createa residual income for financial stability.

Stephanie Haile AKA Wavecritter
http://www.BlogsAndSocialNetworks.info
http://www.WorldWideWealthBuilders.com

What can social bookmarking sites do for you? How do they work? and How do you pick the ones that will work for you?

These are good questions to be sure, but whatquestions should you ask yourself before choosing your personal socialbookmarking sites. Let's begin with a short list to get you headed onthe correct path. What do you want from a bookmarking site? Are friendsa big draw for you? Are you primarily wanting to focus on page ranking?Would you like more exposure to your individual posts? Do your mostrecent posts need more attention or the front page of your site? Areyou up for a popularity contest or are you seeking content relatedratings? Would you like a few social bookmarking sites to focus on toreally make an Internet difference in exposure or just one? Do you haveone blog, social network, or site and want many social bookmarkingsites? Or do you have blogs and social networks or other sites and wantto focus on a few social bookmarking sites?

To shed some light onthe answers to these questions and possible more you would really needto research the masses of social bookmarking sites available toInternet users today. I personally have checked into a few of the majorand minor players in the social bookmarking sector of the net and willlist a few of the ones I have found useful.

Claim ID is a freesign up site. After setting up your personal visitors profile page,viewers will see a photo and a bit of a bio on you along with yourcompilation of sites you have entered. This list has areas fordescriptions of the sites you add and the link is live and takes thevisitor directly to your site. It is sort of an all inclusive "Whatsites do I have to offer" page which some call a link resume. Verifythe sites you list as this will gain you credibility. Claim ID and OpenID are fairly simple sites and an easy way to manage your onlinepresentation identity of hyper-linked URLs.

Yahoo Buzz is asocial bookmarking site where stories are ranked by your votes. Submityour own stories to the Buzz or just hang out and vote on other memberssubmissions. The voting system at Buzz allows voters to vote up or downon any given story to promote or take away promotion of a story. Thereis a complete FAQs section at Yahoo Buzz that will answer navigation,system, and other questions. Buzz is people driven and popularity onyour chosen stories is a must for high ratings. I found Buzz to featurecelebrity and political stories highest. If you have a Yahoo emailaccount, you are just a click away from getting involved with Buzz.

Oneof the bigger social bookmarking sites, MyBlogLog, is also owned byYahoo. This site is also user driven as far as popularity of sites onMyBlogLog. Your creation personal profile area has a listing for allyour personal sites from social networks, blogs, or any web site thatyou could want to create a list and subsequently a "Group" for.Inputting each of sites at MyBlogLog then creates a "Group" for thatsite that other members of MyBlogLog can join. Sub groups with the headbeing a web site. MyBlogLog also has an area to list your socialnetworks under "Services". This list creates a feed from each of thesesites and services and posts the actions right on your viewablepersonal profile page. Visitors who come to your MyBlogLog site will beable to view all of the submissions you have made to your entire listof sites and services right from your home page. Again, a similarity toa link resume but with a higher interaction level than with Claim ID onthe friendly side.

Magnolia is a social bookmarking site with theplus of a Wiki. My first impression here was a feature of Art andPhotography. The video tutorials on the roots section are a must andthe discovery searches and friend capabilities here at Magnolia arealso a big attraction to this site. Keeping your sites togethercollected on a social bookmarking site like Magnolia allows you accessto your favorites anytime no matter which computer you are using.Finding out what others like and enjoy and then sharing your bookmarkswith your friends who have the same interests as you is one of the manyhighlights to this site. Magnolia makes the social side of socialbookmarking work better.

Bloglines tracks your favorite news,blogs, weather, and classifieds so you don't have to. This socialbookmarking site allows the user to read, save, and share all in oneplace. Users of PC's, Mac's, cell phones, and iPhones can investigateBloglines top one thousand, lists of popular feeds, interact on site,and more. Bloglines differs from Google Reader a bit on features. WithGoogle Reader's feed list, you are able to share individual posts orentire feeds for others to then view on your Google Reader home page.Google Reader's site also features a portable coding widget to embed onyour personal blogs or other sites. This is a big plus as using GoogleReaders widget on your sites also adds fresh content to them. One ofthe incredible and numerous draws to using the Google related socialbookmarking site.

Newsvine is a different sort of socialbookmark. It really focuses on headline, interesting, and right nownews and articles. Newsvine offers a toolbar button to make it quiteeasy to submit any article or story you find to your Newsvine profilepage. Like Stumbleupon, Newsvine concentrates on individual posts, newsarticles and stories, not necessarily ones you wrote, but ones you orothers have found to include in the mixx at Newsvine or Stumbleupon.Another major interest here at Newsvine are the groups. This is a very"news paper boy" oriented site for top stories, tech, science, andcuriosity raising stories. If you happen to be the first to submit aparticular article, you have the honor of writing a short descriptionand getting head lined in the article as being the "finder".

WhileNewsvine and Stumbleupon have the toolbar button feature, Digg usuallyhouses an online, on site button to Digg a story, post, or article.Friending is a feature of Stumbleupon, Newsvine and Digg. Ratherrequired at Digg, as without friends your chances of other members"digging" your input are fewer. So keep in mind that the friendingfeatures are prevalent at MyBlogLog, Digg, Newsvine, Magnolia, YahooBuzz, and to some extent with the sharing factor Google Reader.

Technoratiis in its own league and category I think when it comes to socialbookmarking sites. Technorati has its own rating system to determine"Blog Authority". Running with the big dog blogs like People, TechCrunch, Boing Boing, LA Times, and Google will take a lot of focus andprecision, SEO, and detail work. Getting in line with what Technoratihas to offer may take a bit of time to navigate around and learn thesystem, but well worth the effort if this is your end run result.

Socialbookmarking sites like delicious have a system for running the tags orkeyword phrases all together. As opposed to "work at home free trial",they would run the words together and use workathomefreetrial as theactual keyword phrase or tag. While other social bookmarks allow onlyone word at a time and will separate the entire phrase like "work, at,home, free, trial. I believe these sites to be a bit outdated as far asGoogle ratings are concerned. Many search engines prefer the entirephrase as the long tail keyword as it forms a better connection to theindividual words, so keep this in mind as you choose.

Zimbio maynot seem like a social bookmarking site at first glance but delvingfurther into this Wiki based site I found that indeed it works like asocial bookmark for individual posts. Zimbio will gain exposure toindividual posts from the blog sites you list with them by categorizingeach post into a separate Wiki. That is really what some socialbookmark site do, gain you more exposure to your posts and sites.

Socialbookmarking sites can be social featured and driven like Technorati orDigg or just for your personal favorites and listing uses. Furl is onefor you personally as is My Bookmarks and Blink List. These sites arefor you to store your favorites and have access from multiplecomputers. Clip Marks lets you "clip" the section of the page you wishto save or bookmark rather than the entire page. A paragraph, sentence,image or video. The exact part of the page that you wish to favorite.

Choosefrom user voting sites like propeller or Digg, friend sites, sites justfor you, bookmarking sites that also offer cool widgets for your blogs,link lists, community driven or rated by the site, private bookmarks,group featured sites, news focused sites, or the multi socialbookmarking sites like MyBlogLog.

Making a list of questions youwant answered and features you need, focusing on the end result desiredalong the way and using "Do you want to make a list of saved pages foryourself?" Or "Am I looking for page ratings primarily for my sites orindividual posts?" These questions will whittle down your startingpoint in the location of social bookmarking sites for you.