What is Social Bookmarking?

Social Bookmarking uses the same concept as adding a website to your list of Bookmarks or Favourites on your computer.
Social Bookmarking allows you to save and organise bookmarks to a public website, rather than just your computer. This means that you can access your bookmarks from any computer you happen to be using.

You can also store, organise, and share bookmarks of web pages across the internet with friends and people with similar interests.

You can also "tag" the websites you bookmark with keywords to catagorise them. E.g. you might tag the CareOnLine website with keywords such as "Computer support", "Internet Training" or "Carer's Information" or anything else you think is relevant. Tagging helps people see what a website is really about based on the views of people who have visited them. With Social Bookmarking, you get a real idea of what a website is all about.

To create a collection of social bookmarks, you register with a Social Bookmarking site, which lets you store bookmarks and add tags of your choice. You and other visitors can then search for websites and see the public bookmarks with the keyword tags.

For more details about each of these services, you can visit the site directly or read more on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_bookmarking

What is Social Networking?

Social Networking sites are online communities of people who share interests and activities. The sites allow users to interact with each other through email, instant messaging, gaming and similar activities. Many Social Networking websites also have Bookmarking available. Examples of Social Bookmarking websites include MySpace, Facebook and Bebo.

For more details about each of these services, you can read more on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_networking

All of these sites are free to use but you have to register. Each of the sites works slightly differently so use the links below to find out which service is best for you.

(This is not a complete list, just some of the most popular)