Ben Bashford

At the bottom of this article you’ll notice a few buttons that allow you to add it to a few social bookmarking sites (if you have an account).

I’ve had them for quite a while now and I have absolutely no idea if anyone actually uses them. Partly because I’ve never really bothered to check. I added them purely because I could, and when I first discovered social bookmarking I was all over it like a wet flannel.

I now have a problem with them. I didn’t have a problem with them before, but now I do. They vex me. A lot.

The reason that I chose Delicious, Magnolia and Digg was based on thinking that del.icio.us and digg were going to rule the social bookmarking world eventually (which they do – sort of), and that Magnolia was created by Zeldman and I wanted to support his project. I was right about the first two, but the second was really an advertisement for Zeldman’s project. It was my choice to put it there, I thought it might help him in a tiny tiny way.

If you’ve been around on the web long enough you’ll remember sites that had “add me to your bookmarks” links that added the page you were viewing to your browser’s bookmarks with Javascript. Some of the worst offenders even added themselves to your browser’s bookmarks without you asking them to, or better still, set themselves as your homepage!

You know what? I have less of a problem with these (save the brute force intrusiveness of invading your browser settings. That’s definitely a crime as far as I’m concerned). You know why? Because browsers have the option to bookmark sites already. They always did and probably always will in some form or another. it’s a standard method of keeping lists of URLs you find useful and/or visit regularly.

It’s up to the user to choose whether they want to bookmark a site and more importantly it’s up to the user HOW they do so. If they want to write the URL down in a book or on the back of their hand it’s up to them and if they want to add it to their del.icio.us account that’s up to them too. I feel it’s not really up to me to endorse social bookmarking sites or encourage people to bookmark my content. The choice should be entirely theirs.

It’s only marketeers than seem to be keen on pushing people to bookmark sites and while I have to work within the boundaries of marketing common sense and to large extent provide what the client wants I’m going to be trying to find a way to stop them requesting these bookmarking links on their projects.

I think my main point is that by endorsing certain large social networks and bookmarking sites you’re making it difficult for all the others, the underdogs. What about people that use all the other social bookmark sites? What about people that OWN the other social bookmark sites? with everyone providing links to del.icio.us and facebook their content what’s happening to the smaller, maybe better guys? They must be feeling the pinch, right?