I Was Here: Social Bookmarking

We’ve all seen it – a name and a date carved into a secluded spot to let us know we were not the first to be standing there. Sometimes it’s unsightly, and even unwanted, but this pocket-knife graffiti also reassures us that we have a commonality with others we’ve never met, others that can come from different cultures, or from another time. It’s nothing hew – graffiti along the lines of “I was here” has even been found inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, etched with chisels by several of the original workers. The point is, we all find certain subjects or places interesting, and we inevitably find others who share the same interests or connections to place, or subject. Social bookmarking is the online embodiment of this graffiti based on a need to cleanly connect to others and share areas of interest, and used effectively, it can also bolster your search engine optimization efforts.

Social bookmarking is basically the practice of bookmarking a Web page in your browser, as you would normally do, but with a twist. Using an application that understands metadata, you can store, organize, search, and manage your bookmarks for public consumption. The degree of sharing can be tailored to suit individual comfort levels. Bookmarks can be shared with a defined group, or on a larger scale, they can be shared with selective networks, accommodating any arrangement of public and private domains. Viewing of the bookmarks can also be tailored by grouping them by date, or predefined category, or even by search engine. 

By sharing your bookmarks, which I hope would contain several bookmarks to material found on your site, you are bringing attention to your website, and if your bookmarked material is located deep in your site, you may be able to generate additional traffic flow to other parts of your site. In some respects, you can tell a lot about social bookmarking groups based on the set of parameters that distinguishes the group, and if you are able to share your bookmarks with the selective group, you are basically bringing a targeted location to a defined audience, and your material will be available to them even before they perform a search. As others in the group book mark your content, the popularity of the material increases along with the rankings offered by the social book marking site, all of which help to build web presence for your material. 

Of course, there is the dark side of social bookmarking – the evil lunch meat can start to creep into your space. Spammers have caught on to the popularity of social bookmarking, and to cash in, they have unleashed bookmarking campaigns that target the same Web page multiple times with a chorus of popular tags in a hodge-podge of simple-minded greed. But have no fear, contrary to popular opinion, developers are social animals too and love coming up with creative solutions for overcoming abuses. 

Here’s a great article on detecting spam in social bookmarking systems.