Social bookmarking sites have been a game-changer in the online world, presenting an innovative way to manage, share, and discover web content. Whether you’re a digital marketer, a blogger, or simply an Internet enthusiast, these sites offer countless benefits.
For SEO, they can be a goldmine. By sharing your website on these platforms, you generate backlinks, which search engines like Google love. This, in turn, improves your website’s SEO ranking. But that’s not all – social bookmarking sites can also drive a significant amount of traffic to your website. When you share engaging content, other users may just be intrigued enough to visit your site, thereby increasing your website traffic. So, if you haven’t explored social bookmarking sites yet, now’s the time!
Social bookmarking sites have evolved into a pivotal digital strategy. Remember the buzz around platforms like Digg, StumbleUpon, and Delicious? The scenario has seen a dramatic shift. Let’s walk down memory lane, reminisce, and uncover the mystery behind their current status.
What is Social Bookmarking?
Social bookmarking is when users save and organize web pages for future reference. You can tag websites with keywords or phrases to make them easy to find on the bookmarking platform. We use social bookmarking to easily save and find online resources. Users can save web pages for easy access, without needing to remember long URLs or search again. Furthermore, social bookmarking allows users to find and share content with like-minded people.
This promotes collaboration and facilitates knowledge sharing within online communities. Users on social bookmarking sites can rate and comment on content to find reliable sources. You can use these platforms to organize content. You can make your own collections of bookmarks. This helps users reflect their expertise and interests. Social bookmarking is important today. It helps us store, organize, and share online resources.
What are Social Bookmarking Sites?
Imagine a virtual place where you can store, classify, share, and search links through practice-based groundings. That’s what a social bookmarking site is in a nutshell! These sites allow users to bookmark their favorite web pages, which they can later access from any device, anywhere. You might think of them as a more public, interactive version of your browser’s bookmark feature.
Benefits of Using Social Bookmarking Sites
- Boosts Website Traffic: One of the major benefits is the surge in website traffic. Sharing content on these platforms exposes it to a wider audience, bringing in new visitors to your website.
- Enhances Online Visibility: Being active on social bookmarking sites increases your online presence. It can make you or your brand more noticeable, building a digital reputation.
- Improves SEO Ranking: Search engines like Google take into account the number of backlinks to a website when determining its ranking. Sharing your website on these platforms can generate backlinks and improve your SEO.
- Facilitates Content Discovery: Lastly, these platforms are fantastic for discovering new content. They’re a treasure trove of information, with users constantly adding new, interesting links.
The 2010 Era: The Reign of Digg, StumbleUpon, and Delicious
Cast your mind back to 2010. Social bookmarking platforms like Digg, StumbleUpon, and Delicious were everyone’s talk of the town. They were a dream come true for website owners as the traffic and engagement they brought were overwhelming. Digg’s top stories could snag as much as 3,000 diggs!
However, Digg’s misfortune began with the introduction of a new version. The platform nosedived as loyal users abandoned ship, claiming the site had lost its essence. What was once a stronghold of engagement became a ghost town.
And what about Delicious, the pioneer of social bookmarking sites? Loved by a huge user base, the platform was deemed incredibly useful. However, in a shocking turn of events, Yahoo!, the company that bought Delicious in 2005, announced the platform’s potential shutdown or sale. That was a heartbreaking moment for many.
StumbleUpon had a similar fate. Once a significant traffic source for numerous websites, its importance dwindled over time. Webmasters started noticing a distinct drop in traffic from the platform, hinting at a downward spiral.
Enter the new kids on the block – Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Reddit. With their rising popularity, the social bookmarking landscape underwent a drastic transformation. Instagram’s visually engaging platform, LinkedIn’s professional networking charm, TikTok’s short and snappy video content, and Reddit’s dynamic community-based discussions all diverted users’ attention from traditional bookmarking sites.
The Present Scenario: Who’s Wearing the Crown in 2024?
Fast forward to the current digital era. Platforms like Reddit, Mix, and Scoop.it are dominating the social bookmarking realm. Reddit, aptly named “the front page of the internet,” provides a unique platform where users can share links and start discussions on countless topics.
Scoop.it is another platform winning hearts, particularly among professionals. It allows users to curate and share content to their own private ‘topic’ pages, contributing to information sharing and thought leadership.
Bookmarking Site |
Pros |
Cons |
---|---|---|
Highly active community, potential for high visibility. |
Strict rules, potential for backlash if content isn’t well-received. |
|
Digg |
No longer a bookmarking site. It’s more of a content blog now that covers tech/science content. |
Less active user base than some other platforms. |
StumbleUpon |
No longer a bookmarking site. Instead it was rebranded as Mix. Used to be good for content discovery, chance for high traffic with well-received content. |
Limited control over content visibility. |
Great for visual content, drives traffic to site. |
Limited to visual content, not as effective for text-heavy content. |
|
Good for saving long-form articles, high quality backlinks. |
Lesser social interaction as it’s more of a save-for-later service. |
Role of Social Bookmarking in Today’s SEO and Digital Marketing
In the realm of SEO, social bookmarking is an invaluable tool for enhancing visibility, driving traffic, and improving rankings. It’s no longer about just posting links; it’s about engaging with the community and offering high-quality, meaningful content. Social bookmarking can help build backlinks, contribute to brand awareness, and even aid in reputation management.
However, just like every other digital marketing strategy, the ‘how’ matters. Here are a few best practices:
- Create and share compelling content that adds value.
- Engage with the community by participating in discussions.
- Build relationships with other users and influencers in your niche.
- Don’t spam. Respect the rules of each platform and post responsibly.
The Future of Social Bookmarking
While the rapid changes in technology, user behavior, and online marketing trends make it challenging to predict with certainty, we can confidently say that social bookmarking is here to stay. The adoption of AI and machine learning in content creation, coupled with the trend of personalized content, will likely influence the future of social bookmarking.
The introduction of AI-based algorithms and predictive analytics in social media platforms
allows them to better understand user behavior and preferences. This, in turn, can improve the user experience by delivering content that matches their preferences.
But with the power of AI comes responsibility. Users will demand transparency in how their data is used and will expect better control over their information. This could bring about new user-focused features in social bookmarking platforms, further enhancing the user experience.
In conclusion, social bookmarking is a tool that has evolved and adapted to the changing digital landscape. It continues to play a vital role in digital marketing and SEO strategies. The future holds exciting possibilities, with the potential for new technologies to influence its trajectory. As we move forward, social bookmarking is expected to become even more user-centric and personalized, making it an exciting space to watch.
Here’s a comparison table highlighting the differences that lead to the rise and fall of the various social bookmarking platforms.
Site |
Main Features |
Benefits |
Downsides |
---|---|---|---|
Digg (2010) |
User-curated news and stories |
High user engagement, could drive significant traffic |
The introduction of a new version led to user dissatisfaction and decreased activity |
StumbleUpon (2010) |
Content discovery and rating system |
Drove significant traffic to websites, diverse content |
Decrease in user activity over time, less traffic driven to sites |
Delicious (2010) |
User-curated and categorized web bookmarks |
Useful for organizing and discovering web content, high user engagement |
Uncertain future after announcement of potential shutdown or sale |
Instagram |
Photo and video sharing, stories, and live streaming |
High user engagement, good for brand exposure and influencer marketing |
Primarily visual, not traditionally considered a bookmarking site |
LinkedIn |
Professional networking, job postings, and content sharing |
Good for B2B marketing and professional networking |
Less suitable for non-business related content |
TikTok |
Short-form video creation and sharing |
High user engagement, good for reaching younger demographics |
Limited to video content, demographic may not fit all businesses |
Reddit |
User-curated content and discussions in dedicated communities (“subreddits”) |
Great for niche marketing, community engagement, and backlinks |
Strict rules, negative feedback can be public and damaging |
Mix |
Content discovery and sharing across various interests |
Helps discover, save and recommend web content |
Smaller user base compared to other platforms |
Scoop.it |
Content curation and sharing on private ‘topic’ pages |
Supports thought leadership and information sharing, good for B2B marketing |
Premium features require paid plan |
Tumblr |
Microblogging and multimedia sharing platform |
Encourages creativity, has a unique and engaged community, supports multiple post types |
Content visibility can be impacted by platform’s algorithm |
This table provides a high-level overview of the mentioned platforms. As the digital landscape is ever-evolving, the specifics and impact of each platform may change over time. It’s always important to keep abreast of these changes to optimize your social bookmarking strategy.
Social Bookmarking Sites Love Blogs, After All
If you wander around Digg and other social bookmarking sites, you will notice a slight discrimination against blogs (or so it appears at first glance). Many blogging-related stories get buried automatically. The ones that make it to the front page often receive harsh comments along the “who cares about blogs anyway” fashion.
Those episodes made me curious, so I decided to dig a little deeper. The question that I wanted to answer was: how popular are blogs within social bookmarking sites? More specifically: what percentage of “popular” stories are coming from blogs? The results were surprising.
The Methodology
First of all I selected three social bookmarking sites to include on the research: Digg, Delicious and Stumble Upon. The next step was to actually define what would be considered a blog, and what would not.
In order to be considered a blog, the website needed to meet 2 out of the 3 criteria that follow:
- It runs on blogging-specific software
- It has a comment section
- Its content is structured chronologically
Obviously there were some gray areas. Some mainstream publications, for instance, are starting to adopt comments on their websites. They also structure the content chronologically, meaning that they could be considered blogs. But they were not.
That said, blogs of mainstream publications were considered as such. While anything coming from www.wired.com, was not considered, stories coming from blogs.wired.com were considered to be blogs.
The actual research consisted of monitoring the top stories (front page stories from Digg, popular stories from Delicious and “stumbled” pages from StumbleUpon) for 10 days. All the URLs of the counted stories were saved.
The number of stories counted each day is variable for the first two social bookmarking sites (since you can not control it) and fixed for StumbleUpon (since you can control how many pages you “stumble” daily). Below you will find the results.
Digg
Surprisingly enough (at least for me) Digg revealed itself to be the most blog-friendly social bookmarking site among the three. Throughout the 10 days, over 54% of the front page stories came from blogs.
This could be explained by the large number of popular blogs (e.g., Gizmodo, Engadget, Lifehacker and TechCrunch) that have a readership very active on Digg.
Alternatively, since Digg is the site that generates more traffic for featured stories, one could argue that bloggers “aim” for Digg when creating and promoting their content.
Day | Total Stories | Blogs | Non-Blogs | % of Blogs | % of Non-Blogs |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 44 | 17 | 27 | 38,6% | 61,4% |
2 | 47 | 21 | 26 | 44,7% | 55,3% |
3 | 52 | 32 | 20 | 61,5% | 38,5% |
4 | 54 | 36 | 18 | 66,7% | 33,3% |
5 | 45 | 21 | 24 | 46,7% | 53,3% |
6 | 43 | 28 | 15 | 65,1% | 34,9% |
7 | 44 | 24 | 20 | 54,5% | 45,5% |
8 | 43 | 26 | 17 | 60,5% | 39,5% |
9 | 48 | 23 | 25 | 47,9% | 52,1% |
10 | 42 | 22 | 20 | 52,4% | 47,6% |
Average | 46,2 | 25 | 21,2 | 54,1% | 45,9% |
Delicious
Delicious was the most balanced site. Consider that 3 days out of 10 presented more stories coming from blogs. On average, 45,7% of the stories that appeared on the “Popular” page of the social bookmarking site were coming from blogs.
Again, even if this number is not as big as the Digg one, we can say that blogs represent a corner-stone for Delicious users.
Day | Total Stories | Blogs | Non-Blogs | % of Blogs | % of Non-Blogs |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 40 | 15 | 25 | 37,5% | 62,5% |
2 | 34 | 16 | 18 | 47,1% | 52,9% |
3 | 35 | 15 | 20 | 42,9% | 57,1% |
4 | 39 | 25 | 14 | 64,1% | 35,9% |
5 | 32 | 17 | 15 | 53,1% | 46,9% |
6 | 43 | 14 | 29 | 32,6% | 67,4% |
7 | 31 | 14 | 17 | 45,2% | 54,8% |
8 | 31 | 12 | 19 | 38,7% | 61,3% |
9 | 29 | 18 | 11 | 38,9% | 61,1% |
10 | 36 | 14 | 22 | 38,9% | 61,1% |
Average | 35 | 16 | 19 | 45,7% | 54,3% |
StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon had unexpected number as well, but in the opposite direction as those of Digg. There was no single day where the number of “stumbled” pages coming from blogs surpassed the the number non-blog ones.
On average, 32,7% of the served pages were coming from blogs. Maybe the results are biased due to the fact that they are coming from my personal stumble activity, and not from the Stumble Buzz page. I am working on the latter and will update the results shortly.
Day | Total Stories | Blogs | Non-Blogs | % of Blogs | % of Non-Blogs |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 30 | 10 | 20 | 33,3% | 66,7% |
2 | 30 | 9 | 21 | 30,0% | 70,0% |
3 | 30 | 11 | 19 | 36,7% | 63,3% |
4 | 30 | 6 | 24 | 20,0% | 60,0% |
5 | 30 | 8 | 22 | 26,7% | 74,3% |
6 | 30 | 8 | 22 | 26,7% | 74,3% |
7 | 30 | 12 | 18 | 40,0% | 60,0% |
8 | 30 | 11 | 19 | 36,7% | 63,3% |
9 | 30 | 13 | 17 | 43,3% | 56,7% |
10 | 30 | 10 | 20 | 33,3% | 66,7% |
Average | 30 | 9,8 | 20,2 | 32,7% | 67,3% |
Bear in mind that these results might deviate from the actual popularity of blogs within the mentioned social bookmarking sites (even because said popularity changes over the time). I am already working on extending the period of the research to 30 days in order to confirm the results.
On average, 54,1% of Digg‘s front page stories were coming from blogs, 45,7% of Delicious popular stories were coming from blogs and 32,7% of StumbleUpon stumbled pages were blogs.
Regardless of the peculiar characteristics of each social bookmarking site, the numbers were higher than what I was expecting. There are 15 million active blogs in the world, which is a fraction of the active “traditional” websites.
Perhaps there is a widespread misconception regarding the popularity of blogs. In this case, it seems that the facts trump opinions; blogs are more popular and credible than people think.
Top Social Networks – Many Marketers are Considering them the New Social Bookmarking Sites of 2024)
Platform |
Traffic |
SEO Benefits |
---|---|---|
2.8 billion monthly active users |
Massive user base, potential for high traffic, content visibility |
|
Over 2 billion logged-in monthly users |
Second-largest search engine, high-quality traffic, video optimization |
|
2 billion monthly active users |
Direct communication, personalized engagement, targeted traffic |
|
Over 1.3 billion monthly active users |
Direct messaging, customer support, engaged traffic |
|
Over 1 billion monthly active users |
Visual marketing, engagement, shoppable posts |
|
Over 1.2 billion monthly active users |
Engagement, broad range of services, traffic targeting Chinese market |
|
Over 1 billion monthly active users |
Viral video content, creative campaigns, potential for high traffic |
|
Over 800 million monthly active users |
Traffic targeting Chinese market, social networking, messaging |
|
Over 517 million active users |
Content sharing, customization, traffic targeting Chinese market |
|
Over 500 million registered users |
Microblogging, content sharing, traffic targeting Chinese market |
|
430 million monthly active users |
Diverse communities, content sharing, potential for viral traffic |
|
Over 293 million daily active users |
Ephemeral content, engaging with younger demographics |
|
Over 459 million monthly active users |
Visual discovery, traffic for creative and visual content |
|
330 million monthly active users |
Real-time updates, engagement, content amplification |
|
740 million registered users |
Professional networking, B2B opportunities, industry visibility |
|
Over 500 million monthly active users |
Secure messaging, engagement, traffic for specific communities |
|
Over 187 million monthly active users |
Messaging, content sharing, traffic targeting Asian markets |
|
Over 260 million monthly active users |
Messaging, voice calls, content sharing |
|
Over 475 million registered users |
Microblogging, creative expression, community engagement |
|
Over 60 million monthly readers |
Content publishing, SEO benefits, opportunity for wider readership |
Top “Traditional” Social Bookmarking Sites in 2024
These social bookmarking sites allow users to save, organize and share bookmarks (or links) different resources online that they would want to revisit in the future.
DiggNo longer a social bookmarking site.- StumbleUpon/Mix StumbleUpon was shut down as a social bookmarking service, and the URL now redirects to Mix.com
- Scoop.it
- Slashdot
- Diigo
- We Heart It
- Folkd
- BizSugar
- MetaFilter
Newsvine- Pearltrees
- Fark
- Instapaper
- Feedly
- BibSonomy
CiteULikeMySiteVote- HubPages
Kirtsy- LinkaGoGo
- LinkedIn Pulse
- Blinklist
DropJack- DotNetKicks
- LinkArena
Newsle- BoingBoing
Current- ClipClip
- DesignFloat
- WireFan
43 Things- 1 Look 4
- Blog Bookmark
- Blurpalicious
- Bookmark4You
- Bookmarking Base
- Bookmax
- Cloudytags
- Coolpot
- Dailyhostnews
- Dealigg
- Dzone
- Easybm
- Gab
- Goldenmidas
- Gpone
- Hotklix
Indofeed- iOrbix
Kippt- Lynkos
- Milocalbuilder
- Murl
- Myhq
- MyLife
- Netvouz
- Ngopost
- Openfaves
- PiPiNews
- Plurk
- Postolia
- Pusha
- Sitebar
- Sitejot
- Skyrock
- Socialadr
- Sociall
- SocioPost
Startaid- Techdirt
Tracky- URL.ORGanizer
- Votetags
- Wirefan
- YouMob
- ZicZac
- Zypid
- BookmarkMaps
AixinDashi- BookmarkingHost.info
- BookmarkTalk.info
- SocialBookmarkNow.info
SocioPost.com- ActiveBookmarks.com
- Onlinewebmarks.com
- GreatestStory.info
- BookmarkDiary.com
- BookmarkURL.com
- BookmarkFollow.com