Guide to social bookmarking

What is social bookmarking?

Social bookmarking is a way to store, classify, share and search information about web pages. Whether you are researching an essay, looking for advice, or simply browsing for an interesting read, a social bookmarking service can help you organise the information you find useful. What’s more, you can share the things you like with other people from around the world, and look through their favourites to discover fascinating new web pages that you might never have found otherwise.

How does this relate to AVERT.org?

At AVERT.org we’re constantly on the lookout for new ways to provide you, our readers, with the best information on AIDS, sex and sexual health. Increasingly people are using social bookmarking software to organise their favourite web pages and find pages recommended by others. To make life easier for these bookmark fans, we’ve started adding “Bookmark” buttons to our articles. Clicking one of these buttons lets you vote for the article or add it to your list of favourite web pages, using your preferred social bookmarking service.

Bookmarking one of our web pages not only makes it easier for you to find the information again: it also helps raise awareness of our web site and the issues that it covers. So, if you like it, bookmark it!

Overview of some social bookmarking services

There are dozens of social bookmarking services on the web, many of which can be accessed using the “Bookmark” button on our web pages. What follows is a brief description of some of the most popular services, all of which are free to use and quick to subscribe to. Inclusion in this list does not imply endorsement by AVERT.org.

del.icio.us

Instead of saving bookmarks (or “Favorites”) on your computer using your web browser, you can store them on the internet using a del.icio.us account. This allows you to access your bookmarks from any computer in the world, share them with other people, and find new web pages that have been bookmarked by others. Bookmarks can be organised using “tags” such as “AIDS” or “education”, making it easier to find groups of popular pages on a particular topic.

Digg

Once you’ve set up an account with Digg you can submit web pages for other people to look at and review. If someone likes a page then they can give it a positive vote – known as a “Digg” – and submit their comments. The most popular pages appear in categorised lists on the Digg web site. This provides a way of sharing your favourite web pages with thousands of other people.

Furl

Furl is similar to del.icio.us, in that it allows you to save and share bookmarks. Furl also enables you to save copies of your favourite web pages in a personal, searchable archive.

Rather like Digg, the reddit service allows you to submit your favourite web pages for others to review and vote for or against. The most popular web pages are listed on the reddit web site.

Simpy

Simpy is another bookmarking service similar to del.icio.us.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon works by adding new buttons to the toolbar of your web browser. Two of these buttons enable you to vote for or against any web page that you visit. A third button provides a way to “channel surf” the web by taking you to similar web pages that other users have recommended.