The Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Bookmarking general

One of the reasons why people surf the Internet is to see things that would amaze them, and things that they could tell others about. Be it the newly released car from Ferrari, the latest installment in a popular series of video games, a never before seen footage of your favorite model – whatever your interests are. To let others know about what you’ve seen, people resort to social bookmarking. Websites which offer this service allow you to share the addresses of things you see around the web, for the enjoyment and amazement of others as well. If are you a freelance web designer then social bookmarking can greatly help you expose your work on the Web.

One advantage of this service is that the descriptions regarding these bookmarks are made by people. They understand what these bookmarks lead to, and so describe them as they really are. Compare this to search engine, which describe links simply by taking random snippets of the website which include the search term you entered – sometimes, this doesn’t help at all. Another advantage is that these bookmarks are ranked according to how many users have bookmarked it, showing frequency and usefulness of the resource. Compare this again to search engines, which rank the resources basically according to how many external sites link themselves to it.
There are disadvantages, though. The tags associated with these bookmarks have no solid structure or definite vocabulary list. The same tag can be in singular or plural form, in different synonymous words, misspelled, or portrayed in a very confusing way. Also, users have complete control over these tags.

However, once users learn to cope with these disadvantages, the advantages would start to really shine. This bookmarking method is surely a good thing that was developed for Internet users – it lets the Internet connect people with each other even more.