1.0 vs. 2.0 Bookmarking

Web 1.0 bookmarking consisted of creating a list on your computer of your favorite sites. If you liked a site and planned on visiting it in the future, you bookmarked it. If you wanted to visit that site later, you went to your list and clicked on the desired site. A simple and useful organizational system.

With the development of Web 2.0 and it's collaborative nature came Web 2.0 bookmarking, or social bookmarking. With Web 2.0 bookmarking, you post your bookmarks on the internet. They are not stored on your computer. This system has several advantages. First, you do not need your own computer to view your bookmarks. If you are using a different computer, you can still retrieve your bookmarks. When bookmarks are shared on the internet on sites such as Delicious, a common bookmark database is created. So, the site keeps track of all the bookmarks that are being created by people. Why is this a good thing? Because if a large quantity of people bookmark a particular site, it has a greater chance of being a useful site. Social bookmarking helps target good sites. In effect, by being a member of a social bookmarking site, members are creating their own search engine. Instead of going to Google and plugging in a search term such as "Web 2.0 Bookmarking" and sorting through the hundreds of sites that come up in order to find a useful site, the searcher can plug in the search term and pull up the bookmarks of others who have searched the same term and found a site useful enough to bookmark. Thus, social bookmarking is a collaborative effort to help save time by creating a database of good sites.