In 2000, a Wall Street analysts named Joshua Schachter hand a problem. In the late 1990's he started a website which was a simple collection of Web links that he had found interesting and useful. Over time browsers began sending in links they thought the site should feature. His personal list of bookmarked web pages quickly grew to more than 20,000 entries, far more than could be easily handled. So he devised a system of labeling pages with tags. By entering a tag or keyword would immediately bring up saved sites in the category.
Soon thousands of people a day were stopping by and Schachter soon realized that with the deluge of claptrap available on the Net, people were thirsting for good, easily available information. In addition, maybe they were interested in finding out what others thought appealing. He also figured that if tagging was helpful to him, it could make storing and finding bookmarks easier to everyone else. In 2003 he launched a website called Del.icio.us and within a couple of years hundreds of thousands of people were using it.
The Internet is big. Really big and you need an army of full time librarians to sift through and categorize the good websites. Del.icio.us has become a way for users to cooperatively classify information across the Web at no cost whatsoever. As people trawl the Net, they tag interesting pages using any words they want and Del.icio.us will keep track of them. The experts tell us we bookmark pages for two reasons: either for regular use or for use in the future. Almost by accident, it has become an outstanding device for making the Web more coherent. Do a research project on Google and you have to spend hours sorting out the good from the awful? Because social bookmarking sites are ranked by human popularity rather than a robotic formula, you can sometimes get far better search results.
In the future there may be a trend to more and more people switching from search engines to using a social bookmarking site as their main search tool. It is ironic that search engines also love these sites. Why? Because social bookmarking represents a large database of useful sites that have been indexed by human. It would be logical for search engine operators to incorporate in their search algorithm more emphasis on social bookmarking information. This would have the desirable effect of increasing search efficiency by harnessing the power of human selected contents rather than by machine.
Due to its popularity, some users have started using it as a tool to make their website more visible. The more often a web page is submitted and tagged, the better chance it has of being found. Find popularity on a social bookmarking site like Del.icio.us and the number of visitors to your website will soar.
Using Del.icio.us for Your Bookmarking
Social bookmarking site Del.icio.us has a modest appearance which plays down the fact it is a power tool in generating traffic and incoming links to your website. The second exceeding useful benefit is that the bookmarks travel with you. If out of town and you need to do is logon to Del.icio.us for access. You can get stated immediately in the Del.icio.us community without ant additional input or effort. It is just a matter of signing up for a free account and uploading your Bookmarks or Favorites from your browser.
If you own a website it is a useful tool for promoting your content by bookmarking. By using a system of tags will ensure your site is easily located among all your other saved bookmarks. Tags are one-word descriptors that you can assign to your bookmarks on Del.icio.us. you can assign as many tags to a bookmarks as you like and rename or delete the tags later. So, tagging can be a lot easier and more flexible than fitting your information into rigid categories or listed as popular items in Del.icio.us and get thousands of extra visitors a day? Bookmark in your website compelling articles with attention grabbing headlines.
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