The term “social bookmarking†refers to the method of organization and storage of resources by internet users. Through these social bookmarking platforms, files themselves are not shared, just the bookmarks that reference them. A common form of social bookmarking would be some program that allows users to save specific links to web pages that they want to go back to, or share with others. Popular social bookmarking sites of today include StumbleUpon, Digg, Chime.in, and Delicious.
StumbleUpon
As one of the most popular social bookmarking sites, StumbleUpon is a rather simple idea that has exploded in usage over the past two years. As long as you have the toolbar installed on your computer, you can submit any site to the StumbleUpon database. There is no way to submit directly from the website without the toolbar, though. Pages submitted on to StumbleUpon get classified to certain categories and potentially can reach thousands of people. If your site does particularly well amongst the interest group it enters, and if it receives many likes, it will spread across other interests and be seen even more. Submitting your sites to StumbleUpon will give them the opportunity to be seen, liked, and shared at no cost to you.
Digg
Although Digg’s influence has slightly fallen off recently, the links received are still powerful. By consistently submitting your content to Digg, you might strike the gold mine and get on the homepage. This chance is extremely slim, though. Still, by making several accounts and giving your site some “Diggs,†its authority will slowly aggregate and you have an opportunity to get your page off the ground and in to the eyes and computer screens of many other internet users.
Chime.in
Not a very well known site, Chime.in integrates all different parts of the social networking experience in to one single site. Everything on the site is made public, and media can be inserted into every post. Community pages are huge on Chime.in and can help the founders with site promotion or even monetize the page with ads. With a Google PageRank of 8, this site is great for getting pages indexed in to Google. Although the usage of the site pales monstrously in comparison to sites like StumbleUpon and Digg, Chime.in offers a lot of potential if you are willing to look in to it.
Delicious
Not nearly as large as it once was, Delicious still claims several million users globally, and is one of the early social bookmarking sites. Operating off of a categorical submission system, Delicious is extremely easy to submit to, and will help boost the crawl rate of your site. Similarly with Digg, your site (if popular enough) has the opportunity to make the “hotlist†on the site’s homepage, which can help drive natural traffic back to your site. Although its popularity has not seen much increase in recent years, Delicious is still one of the bigger social bookmarking sites currently in use on the web. Since all bookmarks posted to Delicious are publicly viewable, posting pages of your site to it can sort of force Google to crawl it faster and more often.
Social Networking
Social Networking sites have become the most widely used form of website on the internet (besides Google, of course) and have become an integral part in how people of today manage their social lives. It is a weird topic to discuss, but social networks like Facebook infiltrate all age groups, and have slowly become a preferred form of communication amongst most people. The scope and reach of social networking sites is so monstrous, as it allows certain things to spread virally through millions of people in a matter of minutes. News of a catastrophic incident like the shooting massacre in Colorado this past week can spread out from the source and into the eyes of millions within the first 30 minutes. Capitalizing on this extreme connectivity will help your site rank higher in Google, as well as drive real, interested people to your site. The most popular social networking sites today include Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus.
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