Social bookmarking is a way for
internet users to store, organize, share and search
bookmarks of web pages. In a social bookmarking system, users save links to
web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, but depending on the service's features, may be saved privately, shared only with specific people or groups, shared only inside certain
networks, or another combination of publicness and privateness. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, via a search engine, or even randomly.
Most social bookmark services encourage users to organize their bookmarks with informal
tags instead of the traditional browser-based system of folders, although some services feature categories/folders or a combination of folders and tags. They also enable viewing bookmarks associated with a chosen tag, and include information about the number of users who have bookmarked them. Some social bookmarking services also draw inferences from the relationship of tags to create clusters of tags or bookmarks.
Many social bookmarking services provide
web feeds for their lists of bookmarks, including lists organized by tags. This allows subscribers to become aware of new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users.
Founded in late 2003,
del.icio.us pioneered
tagging and coined the term "social bookmarking". In 2004, as del.icio.us began to take off,
Connotea (focusing on social bookmarking for scientists),
Simpy,
Furl, and
Stumbleupon were released, and
Netvouz in 2005. In 2006, Ma.gnolia and
Diigo also entered the bookmarking field. Sites such as
Digg,
reddit, and
Newsvine are a related type of web service that provides a system for social news.
What is Social Bookmarking? 
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