delicious

Social Bookmarking is a way for internet users to save, or bookmark, a website, article, image, or video to an online service. Users save links to their favorite and most useful web pages, in order to remember information.
When you Google “social bookmarking”, the second result, after the Wikipedia definition of social bookmarking, is Delicious. Delicious is an internet site designed to allow you access to any website that you bookmark, no matter what computer you are using. Delicious allows you to access your information on all computers, therefore you are able to use a school computer, work computer etc. to find your websites. It is extremely helpful because unlike your memory, you can always rely on Delicious.
The quickest way to add a bookmark to your Delicious account is to install the Delicious Toolbar for Firefox or Internet Explorer . Once installed, all you have to do to save a page that you are currently viewing to Delicious is to click on the “tag” button. Or, in Firefox, simply right-click and use the Bookmark in Delicious option.
Here are some of the reasons why to use social bookmarking and Delicious-
1. You can access your bookmarks everywhere you go.
This is by far the biggest benefit to social bookmarking in general. Most internet users have several machines that they regularly surf the net on between home, work, school, public libraries, etc. Assuming we are not talking about a link to your financial accounts, why save a link to your local browser that you can only access when you are on one specific PC? Personally, in one day, I could use a max of 6 different machines. Therefore, social bookmarking is the best way for me to access everything I save.
2. You can share your bookmarks with others.
There are a myriad of different reasons that you would want to save bookmarks to share with others. If you are going to share your bookmarks with different people in your life (friends, coworkers, classmates, etc.), you could do it in two ways.

You can create separate Delicious accounts, and give your account link to the applicable people, and they can view all the links you have saved.

If you are ok with anyone being able to view all of your bookmarks, you can just create subject or group specific tags (work, business, marketing, blogging, etc.) and then send the url to bookmarks under your account with that tag.
Now, you can share…
•    The latest marketing news with your advertising team
•    Security news with your IT department at work
•    Health tips for certain illnesses with patients or members of a support group
•    Book review articles with your book club
•    Websites you find while researching an assignment with your classmates
•    Amazing recipes with all the professional and at home chefs that you know

3. You can compile idea lists.

Do you ever come across articles about things that you would like to do one day, for example, take a trip somewhere? Why not save them, with specific tags .Then the next time you have some time, you have a list of ideas ready to go for specific time lengths and destinations.
4. You can organize action items.
As a blogger, I come across useful articles, tips and tricks on a daily basis. Some of them I save because they are great articles that I have benefited from and want to share with other bloggers. There are also articles that I find that I want to apply to my site as soon as I can. I have started tagging these articles, along with pages I can use as examples, with the usual descriptive keywords. So now, when I look at my tag list, I can see all of the articles that I want to take action with in terms of improving my site.
5. You can save the things that inspire you.
There are times when we all need a little inspiration. Whenever you come across something that inspires you, save it to your bookmarks.
6. You can create the ultimate wishlist.
What better way to remember all of the cool things you find that you would love to have, but cannot buy right away, than to save it in a wishlist. Sure, you can create wishlists on Amazon and a variety of other sites, but what if you want everything in one place, or things from other online retailers without wishlists or registries? Just tag pages with things you want as wishlist. Sites, such as Crate and Barrel, promote doing this with a Bookmark and Share link for all the items on their site.

7. You can subscribe to your favorite users and subjects.
As mentioned in my comprehensive guide to using RSS, you can subscribe to Delicious feeds. So if you have a favorite user that you want to keep track of their bookmarking, you can go to that user’s page and at the bottom, subscribe using the “RSS Feed for these Bookmarks” link. You can narrow this down even further, and select a tag on that user’s page, then subscribe to anything the user bookmarks with that particular tag.

If you want to see the latest bookmarks on sites with a specific tag, it is almost the same process. Do a search for the subject you are interested in, and then click on “See all bookmarks tagged” link at the top left of the search results. On that page, you can again go down to the bottom and subscribe to any items with that particular tag.

8. Build a network.

If you find fellow users who are interested in the same things, you can add them to your network. When you are on a user’s page, under the search box at the top right, click “Add to Network”. Now, whenever you bookmark something that you would like to share with them, you will see them listed either under Network Tags as for:username, or under the People tab, depending on whether you are using the browser plugins or the chicklets. When people in your network share links with you, you will see a new message in your inbox, linked at the top right above the search box.
Here are a few tips to help you do that more effectively through del.icio.us:
1.    Bookmark something every day – Don’t just do it haphazardly. To be effective in social bookmarking you have to be consistent. If you haven’t used your account in two or three months people will notice and they won’t add you to their network.
2.    Add the one-click add-on to your browser – Whether you use Firefox or Internet Explorer, you can add an extension to your browser that allows you to add bookmarks with just one click without having to sign in to your account. This is a major time saver.
3.    Don’t just bookmark your own websites – Most people will tell you not to bookmark your own sites at all. I think it’s OK to do this as long as that’s not all you bookmark. You can even tell people that a certain bookmark is your own website by making that note in the comments field. But if you bookmark other people’s stuff – news, blogs, websites you find interesting, and anything that you like – more often than you bookmark your own stuff then you’ll make a lot more friends.
4.    Add at least one new friend every day – When you bookmark an item, del.icio.us will tell you how many other people have bookmarked the same item. Click on that link and you can see their comments. Find a comment by a user that you like? Visit their bookmarks page and take a look at their bookmarks. If they have several bookmarks that you like then you’ve found a good friend. At the top of the page, click where it says “add to your network.”
5.    Delete people from your network who do not reciprocate – There might be instances where you’ll ignore this advice, but on the whole you want people in your network who are active users. An active user is someone who adds friends to their network. Give them a week or two to return the favor and if they don’t then drop them.
6.    Be prolific in the use of tags – Use lots of tags. The more the better. Of course, they should be relevant to the item you are tagging. But if you bookmark an item that discusses collecting seashells by the seashore, for instance, then you can tag it with the following tags: collecting, sea, seashell, seashore, beach, and if the article is about a specific beach or location then add the geographic tags as well: Florida, Jacksonville, etc.
7.    Spend 15-20 a day bookmarking and networking – It doesn’t take long to build a solid network of active users and a good list of bookmarks. If you add five items per day and two friends to your network every day then after one month you will have 150 bookmarks and sixty friends. This is easy to do in 15 minutes.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/

http://www.slideshare.net/

http://kikolani.com/

http://www.ewebmarketing.com.au/

Photo credit: computer.howstuffworks.com/