Social Bookmarking is simply making bookmarks available to a social network. Rather than storing bookmarks on a local computer, the bookmarks are stored to a social bookmarking website. By default, the bookmarks are available for the network to view
with options to make it private if required.
A good tool for social bookmarking used in education is Diigo
.
Using a social bookmarking service instead of traditional bookmarking has a number of advantages:
- Bookmarks are available on any computer. Since bookmarks are stored to the web, they can be accessed and edited from anywhere.
- Social bookmarks can be searched; this helps to located sites in large bookmark collections. Additionally, the entire network’s bookmarks can be searched. Users can often find new resources from their peers.
- A note can be written for each social bookmark. This can help a user to remember what was important for a certain bookmark, especially for large websites or for specific purposes for a saving website.
- Users can share their research with the entire network. The efforts of each user are no longer trapped on local computers. The entire network can benefit from the location of useful websites. Furthermore, network statistics can be used to highlight the websites that the network values, helping the other users to find useful websites.
