Social media sites have exploded in the last ten years, with dozens making it out of the hundreds that are launched. Of course, the most popular social media sites remain Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, but other social media sites are coming online ever day. A subcategory of social media sites is called “social bookmarking sites”, and a great example is the website, Twitter. The characteristic about social bookmark sites that sets them apart from other social media sites is that they primarily focus on user posts that rely on linking to other websites. If you’re on a site like Twitter and Pinterest, you will see that a majority of the posts have outside links to blogs, personal websites, news outlets, and more. While many people use these website to post jokes, personal updates, and more, activity on these sites is used in the search engine industry for determining a company’s ranking. The primary objective behind this type of websites is the ability to bookmark and organize online resources for a variety of reasons on a variety of topics.

Other social media sites that can be classified as social bookmarking sites are lesser known to the public, but they include websites like Digg, Pearltrees, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. Social bookmarking sites are usually generic in the sense that they appeal and cater to a wide range of people, but there are some social bookmarking sites that focus on a certain demographic. For example, Connotea caters to clinicians and scientists. These social networks vary in their format, with some of them requiring that you “follow” a certain number of people or accounts when you first set up your account, and some of them allowing you to select topics or areas that are of interest to you and selecting content to show you based on that.