A social bookmarking site is an online service where people save links to web pages, organize them with tags or notes, and, depending on the service and their privacy settings, share those links or discover links saved by others. It works like the bookmarks menu in a browser, except the list lives on a website and can be opened from any computer or browser.
The core definition
The most-cited short definition comes from Cyprien Lomas in a 2005 EDUCAUSE brief: “Social bookmarking involves saving bookmarks one would normally make in a Web browser to a public Web site and ‘tagging’ them with keywords.” That wording reflects the early period of the idea. Today many services also offer private saving, group sharing and annotation, so “public” is no longer a requirement.
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Pew Research Center’s January 2005 report described the same basics from the user’s side: bookmarks reachable from different computers and browsers, annotations, tags, and the ability to see what other users had saved. The services it named describe that period and shouldn’t be assumed to be available now.
The Tool Desk
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- Save a link. You add a web page or other online resource to your account, usually through a browser extension, a bookmarklet or a button in the site.
- Describe it. You add tags (keywords), and often a title, note or highlighted excerpt, so you can find it later.
- Choose who sees it. Depending on the service, a bookmark can be private, shared with a group, or visible to the wider community.
- Retrieve and discover. You find saved links by tag, list, search or by browsing other users’ collections.
What tags do
A tag is a free-form keyword you attach to a bookmark. Unlike a folder, a bookmark can carry several tags at once, so one link can appear under “privacy,” “research” and “to-read” without being copied. When many people tag links with their own words, the combined tags form a community-made classification, often called a folksonomy. It’s flexible and grows with real usage, but it’s also inconsistent: people may use different spellings or terms for the same subject.
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What a bookmark actually stores
Social bookmarking normally stores a reference to a resource, not the resource itself. If the page is edited, moved or deleted, your bookmark can break. Some services add archiving as a separate feature. Diigo, for example, says it archives saved webpages and makes them searchable, and its main product page labels this a premium feature. Check whether a service archives pages, and on which plan, before relying on it as a long-term record.
Social bookmarking versus similar tools
| Tool type | Main purpose | How it differs |
|---|---|---|
| Browser bookmarks | Personal list of favorite pages | Usually for one person, often without shared tags or community discovery |
| Read-it-later tools | Saving articles to read afterward | Focus on reading; social discovery is typically limited |
| Reference managers | Bibliographic records, citations, bibliographies | Built for academic sourcing; OpenLearn lists Mendeley and Zotero as examples |
| Social news communities | Ranking and discussing submitted links | Activity centers on discussion and aggregation rather than personal organization |
The boundaries are fuzzy, and one product can straddle several categories. Judge a service by its actual features rather than its label.
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Examples and how they differ
The Open University’s OpenLearn resource names Diigo and Pinterest as examples. They aren’t interchangeable: Pinterest is oriented toward visual discovery, while Diigo centers on saving, tagging and annotating. Diigo’s About page, which is the provider’s own description and not independent testing, calls it a personal knowledge-management tool. It lists bookmarks alongside annotation, lists, search, group sharing, privacy controls and archived pages, and says the service dates to 2005 and uses a freemium model.
What to compare when choosing a service
- Sharing controls: private, group and public options, and the default setting for new bookmarks.
- Organization: tags, lists and search quality.
- Annotation and collaboration: highlights, notes and shared collections.
- Archiving: whether it exists and which plan includes it.
- Emphasis: visual discovery, research organization or general link saving.
Services close, change plans and add features, so confirm the current status on a provider’s own pages before depending on it.
Quick Recap
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Key points to remember
- Saving a link to an online account doesn’t make it public; visibility depends on the service and your settings.
- Online storage makes bookmarks available across devices and browsers, which a list kept in a single browser profile doesn’t do.
- Tags group and retrieve links, and shared tagging can build a community vocabulary.
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