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| Image via Crunchbase |
When you are reading a book and life interrupts you, a bookmark is a quick way to save your the page you were on so that you can easily come back to it later. The same concept applies to the book marks on web browsers. When you find a web page that you would like to come back to later, you can save a bookmark in your browser. But what would you do if you can't use your computer, of if you wanted to be able to access your bookmarks from any computer. This is where social bookmarking can help you.
Social bookmarking accomplishes the same tasks as regular bookmarks, and so much more. When you read this article, you will notice small icons which take you to other websites such as Delicious.
Delicious (originally del.icio.us) was one of the first popular bookmark sharing sites where users could store and share their links online.
The key to social bookmarking is being able to quickly and easily save the web pages. Users can do this by clicking on the Delicious icon typically located on the the same page.
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| Adding a bookmark |
Delicious does some work for you by automatically copying the title and URL of the web page, and suggesting some possible tags based on the content. When you're ready to save the bookmark simply click the button and you're done! When you're ready to visit some of your bookmarks head over to Delicious.com
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| Viewing bookmarks |
When you log into your account you will see your bookmarks in reverse chronological order, meaning the most recent bookmarks will be first. You may have saved dozens or even hundreds of bookmarks and finding a relevant link can become difficult if you had to browse through all of them. This is where the magic of tags comes into it's own.
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| Finding bookmarks by tags |
As you save each bookmark you are encouraged to add tags which help you quickly sort and find bookmarks which have the same tag. Unlike the typical folder based sorting found in most browsers, multiple tags can be assigned to each bookmark if it relates to more than one topic or issue. Tagging is an efficient way to organize and group your bookmarks.
If your friends are also signed up on Delicious, you can share what you've found by adding them to your network and making your bookmarks publicly viewable. There are many practical applications for Delicious, especially for students as they collaborate on projects and share reference material.
Perhaps the most important benefit of social bookmarking sites is the ability revisit your browsing history as each day we find millions of new things to discover.