Social Bookmarking

What is social bookmarking?

Technically speaking, social bookmarking is a user-defined taxonomy ( or “folksonomy” as its sometimes referred to in certain techie circles) of Web sites that have been bookmarked by internet users, with the help of metadata, so they can store, organize, search and share URLs.

Now for all those people who don’t spend all their free time reading CNET, social bookmarking is really just tool to put all your favorite Web pages in one place so you can tell your friends and professional colleagues what they should be looking at when they’re online. For example, say you are a student studying public relations (a stretch, I know). You can use a social bookmarking system to put all of your favorite blog posts about your future profession in one place so your parents know they’re not wasting their money on tuition.

How does social bookmarking work?

A social bookmarking system allows internet users to save their favorite links they want to remember or share with others. These links can then be organized by “tagging” them, which forms collections of bookmarks divided into categories so other people can find them. Imagine, again as a public relations student, you are doing research on the latest trends in PR practice, but you happen to also be a bit ADD. You can put all the sites you find about “blogging” in one place with the tag as something like “blogging” (mind-blowing, I know) and all the other ones about “celebrity gossip” tagged as “guilty pleasure” in another place.

Most social bookmarking sites also enable browsing other bookmarks with similar tags so you can see what other people like you found while they were aimlessly surfing the ‘net. However, if you don’t want people to know you were reading about Paris Hilton’s latest scandal or Madge’s workout regimen but still don’t want to forget that juicy site’s URL, social bookmarking systems also lets you mark some bookmarks as private.

When did all this “tagging” and “bookmarking” begin?

The first true social bookmarking site was started in April 1996 (think back to the good ole days of the Spice Girls and the Macarena) with the launch of itList. Within the next three years, a whole batch of SM sites cropped up including BackFlip, Blink, Clip2, Click Marks, and HotLinks. However, these sites died a sudden under the “dot-com bubble burst” due to a lack of revenue-generating opportunities. (This was clearly before the days of Google’s Adwords…)

So, what can SB do for me?

There are many advantages to using a social bookmarking site. For one, SBs searches find sites that have been classified by living, breathing humans, not just webcrawlers like most search engines. This means that the stuff you find under a certain tag actually relates to what you’re searching for, instead of just searching for the number of times a word or phrase is mentioned on a certain Web site. Think about what happens when you Google “guilty pleasure” without the safe search mode turned on... things could get very naked, very quickly.

And, social bookmarking systems can also rank sites based on the number of times other people have bookmarked it. Meaning: like-minded people saving sites that can actually help you find the info you want instead of a search engine ranking sites based on their interconnectivity.

Professors and even corporate big-wigs have started using SB to tell the little people like students and middle management what they should be thinking and talking about.

Ok, it can’t be all that great or else I would have heard about it sooner…

There are some downsides that the minds behind SB can’t really fix. First of all, because of the variety of different terminologies and vocabulary of the English language (and not to mention new slang terms that are created by the thousands everyday), there is no standard set of keywords. A hip-hop artist fan could tag an article about managing your finances “cheddar,” and a suburban father could tag the same article “fiscal responsibility.” The SB system wouldn’t be able to relate the two to people who don’t what either tag means (i.e. me). You say “potato,” and I say “what is cheddar?!?”

Also, there are a lot of dummies out there who can use a SB site but can’t spell to save their life and end up tagging an article about killer strawberry daiquiris as “daccury recipe.”

Recently, due to the intense internet competition, SB sites have become the latest battleground for spammers and unethical corporations who try to up their site’s traffic for search engine optimization. The more a site is submitted or bookmarked, the better chance it has of being found. So for that company who sells male enhancement pills over the internet, SB provides just another way for them to annoy us.

What are some SB sites I could try? (a.k.a. the easiest ones to use)

Probably the most popular social bookmarking site available today is delicious (formally known as del.icio.us). According to their website, delicious is ‘da bomb because:

“With an emphasis on the power of the community, delicious greatly improves how
people discover, remember, manage and share on the internet. “


The many features of delicious are what attract it to so many people. These include:
1. A simple interface that is easy to use
2. A human-readable URL scheme
3. The cutesy domain name (I know I want to click on something called Delicious)
4. RSS feeds that provided syndication
5. The fact that it’s FREE.


Another popular site for SB newbies is StumbleUpon. This service lets users bookmark Web sites, photo and videos as they are viewing them with a special downloadable toolbar. When you find a site that you like (such as that one about ScarJo’s secret wedding), you just click on the “Stumble!” button and the service adds it to your personal profile. You can then give it a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” depending on your opinion of the quality of the gossip….er…information. Also, you can search for sites that other “stumblers” have found and the service only shows you the ones they have given a “thumbs up.” StumbleUpon, therefore, forms a collaborative opinion on website quality by logging each user’s “thumb” rating. It’s like Robert Ebert’s guide to the internet.

For more information on how cool social bookmarking is, you can visit the sites below. Maybe you can even add them to your own list of bookmarks!

7 Things You Should Know About: Social Bookmarking
Social Bookmarking in Plain English
Social Bookmarking: Tools for Collaboration and Interaction
Social Media Survey
Links that are Worth Building

By: Allison Brill

Blogs

Simply put, a weblog, also known as a blog, is a Web site in which journal entries are posted on a regular basis. Blogs can be used for commentary, personal reflection, information, gossip and other topics such as political campaigns. The entries appear on the Web site in reverse chronological order and are available for the public to see and leave comments. A person who post entries and contributes to a blog is called a “blogger”. Bloggers most often use text in their blogs, but some of the other available features they might have are pictures, videos, music and often hyperlinks to connect the reader to other blogs or Web sites. For a more in-depth look into blogs and how they work, check out this entertaining YouTube video explaining Blogs in Plain English.

The inventor of the very first blog is still unknown, but the term “weblog” was coined by Jorn Barger in 1997. The word “blog” was not coined until 1999 when Peter Merholz broke up Bargers term into the two words “we blog”. Since then, the term has gained popularity and is used as both a noun and a verb. Here are some Important Blogging Statistics about blogs and their growing popularity in the United States.

There are many different genres in the world of blogging. Listed here are just a few.
--The most common type of blog is the personal blog. This type is used as a journal or diary where people can post about their daily experiences, thoughts, complaints, and much more. Visit Audrey Caroline's Personal Blog for one mom’s touching story.
-- Political blogs, which are often difficult to control, are also being used more often in campaigns to discuss issues and get feedback regarding elections and candidates. Visit the McCain 2008 Blog for an example.
-- Corporate blogs such as Coca-Cola's are used to promote businesses and their image as well as communicate internally and externally with employees and consumers.
-- Celebrity gossip blogs such as Perez Hilton's is also a popular way for people to read up on their favorite celebs and events in Hollywood.
--There are many other popular types of blogs. Some of the more popular include house blogs for home improvement purposes, fashion blogs, health blogs, news blogs, literary blogs, educational blogs and legal blogs (also know as blawgs).

Blogs have influenced the field of Public Relations by allowing companies to gain exposure and attention through new areas of media. Blogs are allowing companies to attract a much wider audience and are also providing this audience with a direct line of communication to the businesses. Businesses are able to establish more trust and address any company issues openly within a quick time-frame, and not to mention, with much ease.

Companies in the past, when facing controversial issues, have taken it upon themselves to address those issues on a blog to inform the public on the problem occurring. Doing this gives the company the chance to tell their side of the story and also helps them gain public trust.

By: Neila Fricks

RSS

Okay, so you see the RSS symbol just about everywhere as you are conducting your daily web-life. If you are like me (not quite as tech-savvy as the rest of Grady College seems to be) you may not know exactly what RSS is or what it can do for you. But even if you have no clue what it is, you have seen the symbol enough to be curious why it is popping up all over the web.

What is RSS?

RSS most commonly stands for "Real Simple Syndication" (although there are multiple names for it.) According to Wikipedia, "RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video in a standardized format." Put simply, it is an quick, easy way to distribute or receive news and web content, which is updated very frequently, without the hassle of surfing the web.

How does it work?

Many online publishers, such as bloggers or news organizations, syndicate their content. As new content is created, the updated information is organized into a list of notifications called an RSS feed. A special program called an RSS aggregator allows you to grab RSS feeds from various sites. It automatically checks the list of RSS feeds that you have chosen and organizes the information. It is then sent directly to you, so your mailbox does not get cluttered.

Why use RSS?

The Internet has become the most widely used way to obtain information (especially for those in the academic world.) The problem is that there is an overload of potential sources of information. It has become a tedious, time consuming process to constantly check websites whose information is important to you. Also, the content changes frequently and unpredictably. RSS has solved this problem. Notifications from many websites can now be presented to you in an organized manner.

What does this mean for the world of public relations?

Although it may not have been created specifically for this reason, RSS can be used as a valuable marketing tool. First of all, the more people that visit your site the more visible you are on search engines (the closer you are to the first page of results.) If someone adds you to their RSS aggregator they are technically visiting your site more frequently. Even though there are still many people who do not use RSS, most people do visit search engines on a regular basis. You are increasing the publics awareness of your site and/or organization. Now that is a great public relations strategy.

Also, PR2020.com points out that "RSS gives public relations professionals the ability to consume and filter much larger amounts of information."

How do I get started?

Fist you need to find an aggregator (or RSS reader). For most, an online reader is the easiest to obtain. Since gmail is so popular I would start with Google Reader, but there is also My Yahoo. Next, when you go to a site look for the RSS symbol shown above, or they may use an icon with XML or RDF.

For more information visit:

1. A great youtube video that explains RSS in simple terms

2. wikipedia

3. whatisrss.com (clever name, right?)

By: Kelli Hammock

Technorati Offers New Strategies for Public Relations Practitioners

Blogs are the newest rage in the field of Public Relations. Companies and organizations are beginning to use this new form of communication to reach their publics in a quite different way than ever before, and there are thousands of new blogs created each day. The problem, however, is how does someone go about organizing all of these blogs?

This is the question that David Sifry asked himself in 2000. His solution? Technorati, the ultimate blog search engine. It currently tracks 112.8 million blogs and more than 250 million pieces of tagged social media. Technorati is a place where bloggers can organize their favorite blogs, find new blogs, and share their own with people around the world. Technorati also tracks links and rates the relative relevance of blogs, videos and photos.

To fully understand what Technorati is all about, I decided to check it out myself. I found this site quite helpful. The headline tabs are useful to find popular topics quickly, and the search tool is also effective. Each blog has “tags” that are used for searching purposes and for finding related articles. Blogs are rated according to their relevance and popularity. However, when searching for simple topics such as, public relations, I found several top posts that did not seem relevant to what I was searching for.

I believe this search engine for the blogosphere can be an effective and helpful tool for PR practitioners. Technorati allows you to learn who is linking to your company’s blogs and what they’re saying by tracking conversations about your brand. By using the Technorati tags, you can create more exposure for your blog and generate more readers. By using Technorati, practitioners can perpetuate their strategies of furthering their company or brand.

A new approach that many companies are now taking is the use of blog advertisements, and Technorati is in the forefront of this new trend. Each page of the website has several advertisements for different companies. Advertising through social media outlets has recently become a popular trend in PR. This can be an effective tool for practitioners when trying to gain exposure for their company or organization.

PR practitioners should take advantage of what Technorati has to offer. Through creating blogs, or by making use of advertisement opportunities, companies and organizations can expand their resources and reach their publics in a new and innovated way.

Photo caption: Dave Sifry founded Technorati in 2000.

By: Samantha Riddle