Overview

summarized from wikipedia:

• a way for internet users to remember, organize, share, search and save links to web pages

• bookmarks are usually public, but may be saved privately, shared only inside certain networks

• most social bookmark services encourage users to organize their bookmarks with informal tags instead of the traditional browser-based system of folders

• as these services have matured and grown more popular, many have added extra features such as ratings/comments, the ability to import and export bookmarks from browsers, emailing of bookmarks and web annotation

• concept of shared online bookmarks dates back to April 1996 with the launch of itList.com

• the next three years, online bookmark services became competitive, with venture-backed companies like Backflip, Blink, Clip2, Hotlinks, Quiver—but this early generation of social bookmarking companies failed as the dot-com bubble burst

• founded in late 2003, del.icio.us pioneered tagging and coined the term "social bookmarking"

Trends, progressions, and interesting aspects

• way to personalize, organize, author 'weblife'-- and support other social bookmarkers

• tagging of internet resources done by many-- allows for multiple ways of seeing, describing, suggesting-- slippery issues of language, spelling

• system free of controlled vocabulary—- allows tagging according to content, author, genre, "reminds me of" etc. etc. etc. etc.

• multiple tags-- potential to be more inclusive, to link to more resources, to be huge, to be messy, to be mapped

• tag clouds are anti-hierarchical-- support visual, spatial learners

• potentially time-consuming, relies heavily on memory (to remember tags, to remember to tag)

• one way of dealing with/combating web info overload

Possible connections or extensions

• collaborative tagging/ folksonomy/ social classification/ social indexing have huge potential in many information systems......but especially (and nerdily) exciting for me is the potential in the public library. Opac 2.0!

• community of users essentially ranking sites— often used as recommender systems (ex. digg)

Specific examples

• Del.icio.us
• Magnolia