Friday, February 23, 2007

The Best Social Bookmarking Sites

What are social bookmarking sites? Basically, these are sites that allow users to post their favorite sites, using tags (or keywords) to categorize and organize them; then other users can take these bookmarks and add them to their own collection or share them with even more users. Here are some of my favorite social bookmarking sites that I use every single day.

1) del.icio.us

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site that has rapidly taken off even more in popularity since being purchased by Yahoo. I use del.icio.us probably the most out of all these top picks, particularly to post interesting sites that I've found around the Web. I also subscribe to quite a few del.icio.us tags, such as popular and reference, and I get all the sites tagged with these keywords in my RSS reader of choice, Bloglines.

2)
Digg.com

Digg is social bookmarking and social networking gone a little crazy due to the fact that anyone can submit a Digg (site), and then anyone can comment on those same Diggs. For me the most interesting feature of Digg has to actually be the comments on the sites and stories, since the Digg community is not shy about letting folks know how they feel about a particular Digg. Primarily focussed on geeky, technology-type items.

3)
Listible

Listible hasn't been around very long, but already it's one of my must-visit sites. Probably because I have a weird thing for lists. Anyone can start a list about pretty much anything; I've seen lists for Firefox extensions, TV theme songs, and much more. Listible users can rate the items on the list and add comments.

4)
Furl

Furl, a service of LookSmart, gives users the ability to save copies of any Web page, search within your own personal archive of Web pages, and share what you find. People use Furl to create their own personal shopping lists, real estate directories, job searches, student research papers, etc. This may just sound like a fancy way of saying bookmarks; but the thing about Furl is that you can access it from any computer, which means that your Favorites will go with you.

5)
Yahoo My Web 2.0 Beta

Yahoo My Web 2.0 is a social search engine, which means that people and search technology are working together to create both better searches and a better search experience. From the site: "What if you could tap into a directory of favorite web content bookmarked by thousands of people? And what if that content was organized so that you could browse through it by keyword or instantly search to find content on a particular subject?" It's a great way to network and bookmark at the same time.

6)
Flickr

Flickr is a social bookmarking and social networking site with a twist: it's all about photos. Users can upload and tag their favorite photos, then other users can bookmark those photos as favorites and share them with even more people. You can also comment on individual photos and share why you like (or dislike) that image.

7) Slashdot

Slashdot is the original social bookmarking site. Slashdotters can submit stories or links they find interesting and then users comment on them (usually the comments are extremely active). The only drawback of Slashdot is that stories and sites have to be pre-approved; this has actually driven a lot of very fervent Slashdot users to other social bookmark sites such as Digg.

8)
YouTube

YouTube is another social bookmarking site with a twist; it's all about videos. Users upload their favorite videos and their fellow YouTube users can comment, pass these videos on around the Web, or paste them on their Web sites or blogs. YouTube is a great way to find popular homemade (mostly) videos.

9)
Simpy

Simpy is a social bookmarking site that allows users to "save, tag and search your own bookmarks and notes or browse and search other users' links and tags." There's a lot of technology-related stuff here but then again, there's also a lot of very eclectic links on here as well.

10)
Popurls.com

Popurls.com is one of my must-read sites every day. Popurls is a lovely conglomeration of about 10 different social bookmarking sites, some of which I've already mentioned in this list. Popurls is a great way to get all your potential bookmarks in one place.


source: http://websearch.about.com/od/bestwebsites/tp/freebookmarks.htm




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