Open Source Social Bookmark

Open source social bookmark software is the essence of what the web is about: free sharing of knowledge in real-time with a social setting. But what are your option?

The web is a huge and ever-changing pool of knowledge, opinions, events and content, impossible for any one person to assimilate. In fact, it can be very difficult for someone to keep track of even one or two topics, as the flow of information comes so fast and furiously. At the same time, not all of that information is necessarily accurate or useful.

This is where the phenomenon of social bookmarking comes into play. It makes use of two concepts – "tagging" and "the wisdom of crowds."

Tagging is the ability of a person to hook words or phrases onto content links – for example, this article might be tagged "open source, social bookmark, free software." This enables someone looking for articles on those subjects to easily find them and sort through them.

This phenomenon is the idea that the more people tag an article, the more useful it must be. Therefore if 1400 people have taken the time to tag an article on social networking, it's probably got something in it worth reading – whereas an article with only three tags might not (or might be brand new).

Between these two processes, you end up with a fairly reliable way to acquire and navigate the stream of data that might be useful to you. Many websites base their functionality on these ideas and have become immensely popular, such as:

• Digg.com – Probably the most famous, Digg is one of the success stories of the web. If your site makes it to the front page, it means your site has had a lot of traffic, and is likely to get more.
• Del.icio.us – This cleverly-named site makes it absurdly easy to bookmark sites you find useful or to search for sites that others deem worthy.
• Tumblr, Twitter, etc – For stream-of-consciousness bookmarking, these sites use a special kind of metatagging called "hash tags" (created by putting a # symbol in front of a word, like "#lovetoknow"). Twitter daily trends have become a good indication of what's going on in the world wide web.

With juggernauts like Digg and Del.icio.us, it may seem silly to try and create your own social bookmarking site. However if you want to share bookmarks with only a specific group, or want to have more control about how the bookmarking interface works, you may want to try some of these open source social bookmark projects which can be either installed on your website or, in some cases, used online:

• Pligg is a content management system that tries to emulate Digg. It is based about PHP and a MySQL database, and has a very active development and source community. Simply Fired is an example of a website built with Pligg.
• GetBoo – This is an example of an online social bookmarking platform (as is Del.icio.us). The main difference is the ability to create groups and have no ads on the screen. The site is small – only about 56,000 users – but that may make it even more attractive for small groups.
• Scuttle is a free open source software also modeled after Del.icio.us. Many Del.icio.us tools also work with Scuttle, which can make it attractive to developers familiar with the larger platform but looking to implement it for personal or small community use.

There are many more open source platforms, listed various places such as Mashable or the mother of all open-source sites, SourceForge. Most include basic features such as the ability to import current bookmarks, interface enhancements such as CSS and Ajax, and generate RSS feeds.

The tools are free and only limited by your imagination and willingness to use them to create your own social networking home on the web.

• Safe Facebook Applications
• How Do I Make a Podcast
• Blogging the Bible

• Facebook Login Problems
• Facebook Sign In
• Free Lesbian Chat Rooms
• Best Facebook Proxy Sites
• Funny Facebook Status

• Create Your Own Social Networking Website
• Main Page
• Free Social Bookmarks
• Category:About Social Networking
• Social Bookmarking Software