Social Bookmarking

So what’s in a Social Bookmarking site? For the amateur web surfer (do we still use that phrase, or is it just me?) who may stumble across one might not at first be sure what their looking at. Various articles covering a wide spectrum of topics ranging from world news and scientific breakthroughs, to the more entertainment related issues like celebrity gossip or random hilarious photos and videos. To the casual reader, it does feel like a one stop spot for all your entertainment needs. For the more frequent internet user, he/she realizes the usefulness of such websites. With social bookmarking sites, one can “tag” specific words of phrases so that in the future, any topic, news article, or image that has those words attached to it will automatically be presented the next time you log onto the site, thus eliminating unwanted articles. In the field of research, this for me has become quite a godsend. Rather than sifting through dozens or even hundreds of articles, I can go straight to the ones I’m interested in, as has been the case in my blog topic of feminism in the mainstream media. One website I’ve used for quite a while with a lot of success is Digg.

Although Digg may not be quite the social bookmarking site as, say Delicious or StumbleUpon, it’s proven to be quite helpful when it comes to searching for articles on various topics. If I need a cartoon or image dealing with technology or politics, at the top there’s a row of options you can choose from to narrow down your topic. From there, you type in a word or two that you’re looking for and before you know it, you’ve found what you’re looking for. Here’s a good example, the other day I came across an interesting article while on Digg that dealt with a woman’s point of view on the negative side of feminism. Let’s say I found the topic interesting and want to find similar information. By clicking on the comment section, I can see what category this article came from as well as what the top articles are in that category, according to how many people have read them. From here I found a study that claimed women respond to more masculine faces compared to those who feminized. I could go on about other articles I found, but I think you get the point; Digg is an excellent tool for your researching as well as your blogging needs.

I encourage others out there who may be interested in deciding to blog but are having difficulty choosing a topic to blog on. With so many topics and categories to choose from, it shouldn’t be long before you come across something you find interesting and can blog about, as well as referencing the articles you come across. I was also surprised how much easier it was to find articles that dealt with the topic of feminism in the mainstream media. A lot of the other websites didn’t really have that much to offer in that area which was why I was really drawn to using Digg as a social bookmarking tool.