A way to save, sort, share and recommend articles

Social bookmarking is a Web-based service to save, sort and share Internet bookmarks. Each of our articles includes these social bookmark icons and links:

These are all social bookmarking services that offer different ways to save, sort, share and recommend stories. (For a complete description, see the Wikipedia article here or watch a great video explanation here. We adapted this article from one by the Austin American Stateman)

Each of the services is free, but they all require user registration.

Here's a brief description of some of the most popular services, information on how to use them and links you can follow to register and find out more about the sites:

del.icio.us | Digg | reddit | Newsvine | Yahoo! | Facebook

del.icio.us

One of the most popular social bookmarking Web sites. Del.icio.us is a way of storing all your favorite Web pages and then sharing then with the other users of the del.icio.us service.

Del.icio.us also gives users the ability to "tag" their bookmarks with descriptive category names. For example, someone who has bookmarked multiple Web pages that deal with the Baptist General Convention of Texas could tag those links with any terms they want, like "Baptist," "BGCT," "Texas Baptists," etc.

To register, go to: http://del.icio.us/register

For more information about Del.icio.us, go to http://del.icio.us/about

Digg

Originally a technology site, Digg has now branched out into covering a wider range of topics, including entertainment and business. Users share online content by submitting links to the site. At that point, the Digg audience can vote on whether or not they think it is interesting. Articles with lots of votes, or "diggs," rise up higher on the site's main page and topical subsection pages.

Another form of social sharing, this site also lets users categorize the content they are submitting to Digg and label it with descriptions of up to 350 characters. Digg users can also submit comments on each content item submitted to the site.

To register, go to: http://digg.com/register

For more information about Digg, go to http://digg.com/about

Newsvine

Newsvine is one of the foremost online news communities, letting you decide which stories are important. Their mission is to bring together big and little media in a way that respects established journalism and empowers the individual at the same time.

To register, go to: http://www.newsvine.com/_tools/new/user

For more information about Newsvine, go to http://www.newsvine.com/_cms/info/companyinfo

reddit

A community Web site where users can post links to content on the Web. Other users then give articles a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Reddit uses those votes to build a user profile and to find articles to recommend to you. Users can also submit comments on items posted to the site.

To register, go to: http://reddit.com/login

For more information about Reddit, go to: http://reddit.com/help/faq

Yahoo!

Users of Yahoo's "MyYahoo" feature can save bookmarks to their personal page, tag them with keywords, and share them with other Yahoo users.

Sign up for a personal Yahoo account here: http://e.my.yahoo.com/config/my_init

Facebook

Facebook is made up of many networks - individual schools, companies or regions. To join Facebook, people can authenticate into a school or work network, or they can join a regional network. If you are a registered user, you can also "share" news stories with your network.

To register, go to: https://register.facebook.com/r.php

For more information about Facebook, go to http://www.facebook.com/about.php