How to Use Social Book Marking
With the information age, people, companies, and governments now control the flow of information and the largest medium for the dispersal of this information is the Internet.
The Internet redefined the phrase “intellectual endeavor” as we know it, and led to the birth to the information age. Amongst the most profound mediums within the Internet that influence the direction of information is something known as social book marking. Social book marking allows a kind of democratic selection of what is considered hot or not amongst the masses of people who utilize the Internet everyday.
If you are familiar with Digg, Reddit, or Del.icio.us you are familiar with social book marking. Social book marking allows anyone who enjoys a particular piece of media on the Internet, be it article, news feed, video, or even audio clip to bookmark the piece and essentially make an open announcement that they suggest it for the review of all other bookmark users.
For example, if I was to read a particularly article on a news site, and felt that everyone on earth needs to read the same article or that it just didn’t get enough coverage in my opinion, then I can use a social bookmark to call it to the attention of all the other people who frequent book marking lists everyday.
The Abuse of Social Book marking
With time, a given book marking list becomes a display of mass opinion of the information on the Internet. Unfortunately, however it’s this information that has caught the attention of many relatively unscrupulous web users.
One of the problems with social book marking is its propensity for disuse and abuse. If you are wondering how a social book marking site could be misused, think about the millions of viewers who check book marking lists everyday. Many companies and even governments would love to take advantage of such a rich flow of consumers of information.
Many of the social book marking sites are attacked by web users who would like to recommend a particular idea or product by making a false buzz around a particular piece of media. Fortunately many book marking administrators have become keen to such abuse, and have thus developed more stringent algorithms and policies to attempt to curb it.
The Users of Social Book marking
Some of the book marking sites that are more well known had interesting beginnings and appeal to a particular segment of web users. Del.icio.us for example is a social book marking web service that was developed by Joshua Schachter in 2003, and because of immense popularity was bought near the end of 2005 by Yahoo for a substantial sum of money.
Del.icio.us appeals to a relatively wide range of users, unlike Digg which seems to draw an on average younger populace of web users. Digg has been accused by many critics of drawing much abuse including the idea that much of Digg is controlled by an elite few.
Even more interesting is the bury option, which allows users to vote to bury a particular piece of media that appears high on the link list. The bury option has the potential for groups of users to control the flow of information by covering up specific pieces of media. Also, Digg has been found to have an air of the mob mentality and a seemingly juvenile flair. Reddit, another huge book marking site is extremely popular and seems to have a more moderate distribution of information.
The tremendous influence of social book marking on the flow of information and media on the net cannot be underestimated. Chances are, if you are reading this article you too utilize one of many of these utilities.
