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| Social Media |
bookmarking and aggregating – sharing things you like
If there are web sites that you visit often, or that you would like to keep as a reference to come back to, it is easy to use your browser to “bookmark” them. This means that you store the URL so that you can locate it again easily. It also gives you a personal library of web sites that you can store on your computer.
Social bookmarking sites, however, allow you store these links online, use tags to describe them and share these lists with other users. Some of these sites let you submit URLs that other users vote on, while others allow you to use the tags saved to browse through the lists and libraries that have been generated.
Web sites which want to encourage users to submit content to bookmarking and aggregating sites use chicklets. These are buttons placed around the content that make it easier to submit and share the article.
These services allow you to see what the community of web users finds useful, interesting or humorous. You are able to find other users with similar interests to yours, and explore the web sites that they have found that you might not have come across yet.
Social bookmarking allows like-minded people to share interesting and relevant content with one another easily. It can also be an excellent tool for members of a company or organisation to earmark relevant web sites and articles. Content submitted to a social bookmarking or aggregating site can dramatically increase traffic to a web site, and expose the site to many new eyeballs.
del.icio.us (del.icio.us) is a social bookmarking site which was created in 2003 by Joshua Schacter and today boasts over 3 million users (Arrington, 2007). It was designed to be a site which would help Internet users organise online media in a quick, easy to access and user-friendly format. Now owned by Yahoo!, the primary function of del.icio.us is to allow you to store all of your bookmarks online and then to allow you to access those bookmarks from any computer anywhere in the world. del.icio.us is more of a community based tool in comparison to the other social bookmarking tools out there, as it allows others to see your bookmarks. Essentially it lets you identify other people whose interests and concerns parallel yours and grants you access to all of their bookmarks as well.
Check out del.icio.us/quirkemarketingtextbook to see some of the URLs we think are relevant to your eMarketing studies and career.
Digg (www.digg.com), Muti (www.muti.co.za) and Reddit (www.reddit.com) are sites where users submit content which other users can then vote on. Popularity, based on votes, moves the submitted content up and down lists which are available on these sites. Submitting and voting requires registration, but there are many, many people who visit these sites to get an overview of content that is “hot”. In fact, in early 2008, Digg was at 170 in the Alexa rankings. Although its traffic is declining, it’s still generating plenty of traffic each day.
Appearing on the top of these lists generates a huge increase in traffic for the content sites, so much so that servers can crash if the leap in visitors is unexpected. Getting into the top listings is a prize eyed by many a marketer, but any attempt to manipulate listings usually backfires and can generate plenty of community backlash.
The communities around these sites differ demographically, and this is reflected in the content. For example, Digg has been technology focused, while Reddit tends to have more general news.
Stumbleupon (www.stumbleupon.com) lets you explore the Web through your interests, based on how other Web users tag content. Users select categories of interest and bookmark URLs to those categories. You can then choose to “stumble” through the Web using the category of your choice. The service will randomly show you a web site that has been submitted to that category.
Stumbleupon allows users to explore the web based on the taxonomy applied by other users. Instead of looking to search engines for relevance, users are instead appealing to the knowledge of a community.
Technorati (www.technorati.com) started life as a real-time blog search engine but has since evolved to incorporate other forms of user generated content including images and videos. According to technorati.com/about, Technorati finds itself tracking over 112 million blogs and 250 million pieces of tagged social media as of early 2008. Internationally it is THE blog aggregator and an essential tool for anyone who operates online.
If there are web sites that you visit often, or that you would like to keep as a reference to come back to, it is easy to use your browser to “bookmark” them. This means that you store the URL so that you can locate it again easily. It also gives you a personal library of web sites that you can store on your computer.
Social bookmarking sites, however, allow you store these links online, use tags to describe them and share these lists with other users. Some of these sites let you submit URLs that other users vote on, while others allow you to use the tags saved to browse through the lists and libraries that have been generated.
Web sites which want to encourage users to submit content to bookmarking and aggregating sites use chicklets. These are buttons placed around the content that make it easier to submit and share the article.
These services allow you to see what the community of web users finds useful, interesting or humorous. You are able to find other users with similar interests to yours, and explore the web sites that they have found that you might not have come across yet.
Social bookmarking allows like-minded people to share interesting and relevant content with one another easily. It can also be an excellent tool for members of a company or organisation to earmark relevant web sites and articles. Content submitted to a social bookmarking or aggregating site can dramatically increase traffic to a web site, and expose the site to many new eyeballs.
del.icio.us (del.icio.us) is a social bookmarking site which was created in 2003 by Joshua Schacter and today boasts over 3 million users (Arrington, 2007). It was designed to be a site which would help Internet users organise online media in a quick, easy to access and user-friendly format. Now owned by Yahoo!, the primary function of del.icio.us is to allow you to store all of your bookmarks online and then to allow you to access those bookmarks from any computer anywhere in the world. del.icio.us is more of a community based tool in comparison to the other social bookmarking tools out there, as it allows others to see your bookmarks. Essentially it lets you identify other people whose interests and concerns parallel yours and grants you access to all of their bookmarks as well.
Check out del.icio.us/quirkemarketingtextbook to see some of the URLs we think are relevant to your eMarketing studies and career.
Digg (www.digg.com), Muti (www.muti.co.za) and Reddit (www.reddit.com) are sites where users submit content which other users can then vote on. Popularity, based on votes, moves the submitted content up and down lists which are available on these sites. Submitting and voting requires registration, but there are many, many people who visit these sites to get an overview of content that is “hot”. In fact, in early 2008, Digg was at 170 in the Alexa rankings. Although its traffic is declining, it’s still generating plenty of traffic each day.
Appearing on the top of these lists generates a huge increase in traffic for the content sites, so much so that servers can crash if the leap in visitors is unexpected. Getting into the top listings is a prize eyed by many a marketer, but any attempt to manipulate listings usually backfires and can generate plenty of community backlash.
The communities around these sites differ demographically, and this is reflected in the content. For example, Digg has been technology focused, while Reddit tends to have more general news.
Stumbleupon (www.stumbleupon.com) lets you explore the Web through your interests, based on how other Web users tag content. Users select categories of interest and bookmark URLs to those categories. You can then choose to “stumble” through the Web using the category of your choice. The service will randomly show you a web site that has been submitted to that category.
Stumbleupon allows users to explore the web based on the taxonomy applied by other users. Instead of looking to search engines for relevance, users are instead appealing to the knowledge of a community.
Technorati (www.technorati.com) started life as a real-time blog search engine but has since evolved to incorporate other forms of user generated content including images and videos. According to technorati.com/about, Technorati finds itself tracking over 112 million blogs and 250 million pieces of tagged social media as of early 2008. Internationally it is THE blog aggregator and an essential tool for anyone who operates online.
Technorati’s core is a tag-based index that allows users to conduct searches on topics that interest them. Contributors are able to tag their individual posts – the better tagged a post, the better chance it has of being picked up by a relevant search. Instead of contributors being separated into categories it is the content of each individual post that is indexed. Technorati doesn’t just search the blogs of subscribed members though – it also operates as a normal search engine.
Technorati can also be used to keep tabs on Internet buzz, both to monitor online reputation and to see what trends are emerging.
Technorati can also be used to keep tabs on Internet buzz, both to monitor online reputation and to see what trends are emerging.
