Social Bookmarking

As part of my course, I have been investigating and participating in social bookmarking. This has been an interesting experience. I have considered myself to be fairly up to date with the workings of the Internet and what it has to offer. However, this has opened my eyes to a whole new avenue of information gathering and entertainment. Social Bookmarking allows you to make public a list of websites that you have found interesting. Further, you have the ability to tag each bookmark with key terms. These tags can then be used as a type of search engine for other people to find websites that include these tags. Likewise, you are able to search other peoples tags and websites listed.

This is a great tool for researching a particular topic. I was able to quickly find a list of websites that other people have found useful to them. It saves time of sorting through useless sites when doing research. Also, it is a useful collaboration tool. In this course, we are doing a group research/presentation project. My partner and myself have the ability to easily share websites we found useful in our research. This is like a new vein of the 'information superhighway'. It is like finding someones old highlighted road map with notations on it when you are going on a similar trip. This will prove to be useful when navigating a continually expanding Internet.

Another factor I found with social bookmarking is a sense of snooping. It feels a little invasive to be sorting through other peoples bookmarks, even though I know they are aware of it. I found myself getting off on tangents finding interesting bookmarks that were off topic. It is like learning about people by sorting through their personal items. Even with the understanding of the purpose of the tool, I still had this feeling of invading peoples privacy. I imagine this sensation will go away as I use this more often. Until then, I'll continue to be a snoop.