These are sites that enable the user to create a list of his/her favourite information on the Web through the use of tags or keywords. Other users can then take these tags and add them to their own collection, or even spread them around, creating a huge web of preferences built up over time by many users. These tags can be in form of videos, shopping lists, real estate directories, job search results, student research papers / essays, etc.
Basically, social bookmarking is a means of saving your preferred web pages or online information for future reference instead of storing the same information in the “Favorites” page of your browser. They are saved in a social bookmarking site for future reference/access.
For those in business, social bookmarking can be of great advantage. This is because one can actually save the links to one’s own businesses. This is due to the added ability to rate and comment on bookmarks, export/import bookmarks and even e-mail bookmarks.
Also, you may base your business on the creation and updating of tags and bookmarks for various companies that will in turn pay you for literally advertising them online through Bookmarking sites. The basic principle is that the more a website is tagged and bookmarked, the greater the chances of another person visiting that website. Customers are thus more aware of the availability of your product in the market and can thus buy it more readily.
Social Bookmarking can also be used to promote various functions and events. These may be events that you have organised yourself as part of the business, or that a client has forwarded to you to bookmark and tag for them.
Social bookmarking can be of huge advantage if one works in the media industry. Freelance journalists can earn from the tags posted by other people with regards to news items. People also bookmark pages from web pages detailing events as they occurred.
The journalists then follow these tags and bookmarks and are thus kept up to date with regards to the occurrences around the world.
Examples of bookmarking sites include Delicious, Furl, Simpy, Diigo and Stumbleupon.
These and other social bookmarking sites have changed the way we search for data and items on the internet, since all you have to do is search for a tag or a bookmark that meets your criteria.