Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a rising trend in information management capitalizing on the use of social networking sites where users are allowed to share a bookmark and tag various topics on public web sites with key words that can be shared with other users helping them easily find topics of interest. Users of social benchmarking can view the tags and create sharable documents for others to use that have a similar interest in the topic you may have chosen.

Social bookmarking like any other technology has its advantages and disadvantages. An advantage to bookmarking information via a social media site is that your bookmark is available from any computer that you are able to use as long as you are not restricted to that site. Once a user bookmarks and tags the information on the site that information is available to the user virtually anywhere, even a mobile phone or web tablet. Social bookmarking is a good way to collaborate with other people to save important web pages and make them available to others in your organization (Bizzard). Social Bookmarking websites drive qualified traffic because more and more consumers use them as "trusted" search engines that deliver better results than Google or MSN (Bizzard). Some disadvantages of social bookmarking is the tags become too personalize. There is not a constant methodology to how tags can be created. Tags to recreational or business documents can be lost due to misspelling or unconventional wording which can cause duplicate bookmarks for the same subject due to a varied vocabulary. Another disadvantage that social bookmarking posses is its susceptibility to high spam risk. Since people can just search through different subjects or tags in order to find thing faster, spamming is increased, a risk that would not have elevated if social bookmarking users would only receive recommended links from people whom they have subscribed to(Arellano).

When deciding whether to use social bookmarking for knowledge management at a business one could look at various management, organization, and technology issues should be addressed. For internal use, a business may set a standard that company jargon must be used when tagging a bookmark to make it more consistent for others to follow. The business would want to take a look at what social media sites they will restrict use of. The company wants to make sure that the sites accessed are not prone to spam which could penetrate the company's firewall. The company also would want to look at getting the employees by in to the usefulness of the system. As I read the text for the assignment thoughts of applications that I use on a daily basis that tie into this weeks reading. One system in particular; called Tspace, a Facebook/Myspace type site which allows employees to tag pages and subject. I have yet to buy into the use of the tool. But after knowledge gained I will go back and review the site again for more use.

Standards vary between