Found a good post today with a good examples about why use social bookmarks, check it out->Lorelle on WordPress ยป Social Bookmarking Managers
What makes social bookmarks so good are the users and I've found good taggers that made me discover cool links. But when I see a bookmark that isn't well tagged I think it's generally done by the import feature... So I thought I'd share some things I learnt:
Import to social bookmarks:
This is important specially for services which don't have a quick way to undo/delete your bookmarks so think carefully.
- First save a copy of your bookmarks so you can import them back after. (Depending on the browser generally it's in the menu -> Export bookmarks.)
- For services that keep the hierarchical folder structure, remove the toobar folder and display everything as you would want them to be displayed online.
- Take your time to rename each folder, it's really worth it. Depending on the service you use some convert the folder names to tags, in that case even if they become long names imagine them already as tags, be generous to be sure to find them again. But the problem is that most places I've seen don't explain how it's going to be imported, so try looking at other user's bookmarks and take a wild guess.
- Remove all special characters such as /, %, &...
- Some services have link checkers but still remove all local bookmarks and bookmarklets.
- Some services don't have private bookmarks, in that case remove all links that directly go to logged in pages such as imageShake photoblog.
- Remove all your private links such as your mail in-box link.
- Save it and import in to your social bookmark service.
Tagging :
- When you bookmark, use tags everybody would use in the search field.
- Don't use made-up tags unless you don't want people to find them.
- Remember to put a tag about the main object, if it's an article about social bookmarks also put an 'article' tag. If it's a web-based software tag also 'web' or 'online' so we won't mix it with the local installation software. If it's an article about blogging try 'article'+'about'+'blog' instead of blogging, this way it'll get listed under blog and from there we can refine our search using the other tags.
- If you're not sure of using uppercase or lowercase check it out, see what the majority uses.
- Don't use abbreviations like CMS but it's OK for HTML, CSS, XML...
- Try to add a notes, even if you can remember all the bookmark titles and you're a genius, do it for the other users.
- Most bookmarklets I've seen have the possibility to select some text that then goes automatically in to the description, clip or note area, use it! When I want to bookmark a software or an service I browse to the 'About' or 'Help' page to select some explicative text then remove the .../about.html from the URL. This is specially attractive for bookmarklets like Netvouz has, it will then suggest a list of tags from the selected text and I don't need to switch from mouse to keybord with both hands.
- Try tagging: web+tools instead of 'web tools' or 'webtools in one tag, so you can use them else where, like web+design, blog+tools... and your tag list won't become too long.
- If you know additional information like features. eg. For a bookmarking a social service: tag 'toolbar' if it has a toolbar, (and 'bookmarklet' if they have bookmarklet... ) so the person searching could find, say, all social bookmark services that have toolbars.
- Tag like mad, in other words, be social. It easyer to search over-tagged bookmarks than if they were lacking. (And you don't allways have batch editing like in Flickr or Netvouz. )
Again, tag, tag, tag social that's why it's called social bookmarks, for sharing. Do what you would want others to do. In case, there are other privat or category system bookmark services like myVmarks or Bookmark4U which I heard are very good too.
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