Social bookmarking has many unique and special features. One of the most popular features of social bookmarking is how it allows us to share our favorite websites with others without having to be on the same computer the favorites were saved. However, another feature that makes social bookmarking very popular and useful is its ability to act as a search engine.
If you've ever gone on a search engine to look for something in particular, you know that the keywords you enter can make the difference in the results you get back in the search. Even with the best keywords used, you're still going to get hundreds of results, leaving you many links to browse through to find what you're looking for. You can click on link after link and still not find what you're really looking for. Social bookmarking takes the work and drudgery out of searching for something online.
Search engines, as useful as they can be, are computer generated whereas the social bookmarking sites are people generated. An individual person took the time to save a website and tag it so others could view it as well. By tagging the website in a unique manner, it's going to be much easier to find by your friends, family or even strangers.
When you look at many of the websites on social bookmarking sites, you'll be able to see how many other people have bookmarked it on their favorites list. Many of the social bookmarking sites have the websites voted on or marked in a specific way so viewers can tell which websites are the most popular as well as which ones are the most recently posted. This can save a lot of searching time.
I remember in the past seeing something of interest that I wanted to share with a family member later only to discover I couldn't seem to find it quite as easily the second time around. Social bookmarking makes searching easy because the websites you want to share with others can be tagged with words, note and annotations that they'll know.
Have you ever searched for something through the search engines and thought you found the perfect article only to look on the bottom and see it was posted four years ago? You will not experience this with social bookmarking. The websites are broken down into categories and tagged or voted on so you know which articles or websites are the ones you want to view first.