Site It!

(Another of my published articles. If anybody wants to reference this, I would appreciate a citation or a link back.thanks)

I read a review once of a book (I forget which) where the reviewer said, “I liked it so much, I wanted to run out into the street and tell everyone I knew”. I can totally empathize with that feeling because we as humans have this irresistible urge to recommend. We particularly tend to do that when we have enjoyed a product or service. A friend of mine made it a point to tell everyone of the great service she was getting from her broadband provider and I must admit, I did give them a call to see if I could switch over to theirs. A friend’s recommendation is unarguably more powerful than all the marketing tactics put together, as it is coming from a person who is implicitly trusted. This same implicit trust is being put to use on a phenomenon called Social Bookmarking

According to Wikipedia, Social Bookmarking is defined as “a method for internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata”. Social Bookmarking combines the practice of bookmarking a site (which is conventionally done by adding the link to our “favorites” tab present in our browser) and tagging it under specific keywords. It is analogous to filing documents in folders albeit with a Web 2.0 twist! To get started on Social Bookmarking, one has to usually register with Social Bookmarking sites such as Del.icio.us, Digg, Stumbleupon etc and then start saving the web pages that one wants to store or share onto these sites. The sites are usually “tagged” based on various criteria and can be made either public (to viewed by all) or private (to be viewed by the user only). Although, the phenomenon of saving bookmarks online is more than a decade old, the emphasis is now on the “tagged” information and how it can be distributed through a social network. The mantra of social bookmarking sites is not only storing bookmarks but also sharing it with our network and also inturn, discovering the bookmarks of our network.

Social Bookmarking is a radical new way of organizing & categorizing the information on the web. The most significant aspect of Social Bookmarking is the creation of “Tags”. A tag refers to a label that classifies the information on a page. These tags can then be made publicly accessible, thus enabling us to connect with other users of similar interests. Indeed, Social Bookmarking sites are often heralded as the new wave after search engines as the facility of tags makes it easy for anyone to search for any information relating to that tag. Another advantage of tags is that the classification is done by humans who understand the content as opposed to search engines, which determine the content of a page based on an algorithm.

Social Bookmarking also allows for another interesting phenomenon. As sites get bookmarked, tagged and shared, the site that gets bookmarked more is obviously perceived as more relevant than the others. This inturn results in an organic ranking system that enables users to search for the right content more effectively. For example, a site under the tag of “Social Bookmarking” that is bookmarked by over 100 people would logically seem a better a choice than a site that is bookmarked by only 5 people.

Social Bookmarking is not only advantageous to researchers but to businesses as well. Social Bookmarking sites offer high visibility. These sites attract a lot of traffic from people who are looking for something. Through tags and the inorganic ranking system, they offer a better positioning to any site. Additionally when a particular site is bookmarked on a social bookmarking site it creates a backlink to that site. The more it is bookmarked and the more backlinks that are created, the more it is valued by search engines, as backlinks are a clear indication of popularity. Social Bookmarking can be an effective tool in marketing a website by ensuring that it is tagged on as many social bookmarking sites as possible. Additionally, by adding social bookmarking sites’ icons on a website, one must encourage visitors to tag the page inorder to increase the number of bookmarks. This why most news articles these days offer icons of Del.icio.us, Digg etc to bookmark the pages

As with any evolving technology, there are certain downsides to Social Bookmarking as well. As the most important aspect of these sites are the tags, the efficacy depends on the accuracy with which these tags are created and as there is currently no standard on how tags should be created, various errors relating to meaning, spelling, structure etc often creep up. Secondly, as social bookmarking is driven solely by people, there is a risk of presenting a skewed view of a particular topic and also interpreting it in a certain manner.

Tagging information through keywords could radically change the way we store, share & discover information. More importantly, it has the potential to create a system that understands the human rationale of classifying information as opposed to search engines and their complex algorithms.