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To tell the truth, I was very confused when I first heard of it. Luckily, in the days before I started blogging, I had been invited by a friend to the Stylehive.com launch party. Though free food and goodie bag was the main motivation sit through the presentation, I did get to learn about social bookmarking, and how this website can organize your finds through keywords. At the time I was confused why anyone would need this, Stylehive’s usefulness soon became apparent when I started blogging and my bookmarks folder was overflowing with websites I couldn’t remember.

Social bookmarking is one way to store, organize, search and manage bookmarks of websites*.
Here’s a good video to show how these sites work:

Social Bookmarking websites are handy for a number of reasons:

1. Your information is kept online, so if you are using more than one computer (home/work) or if your computer dies (lord forbid) your research is saved
2. You can tag your finds with searchable keywords making it easier for you to find them later. Often times I would use tags corresponding with my editorial calendar to make post writing easier, by category, ie. shoes, boutiques, shopping, vintage, eco, etc…
3. You can share your sites with other people, who in turn share their sites with you, making life easier for you.
4. Social bookmarking sites are also good marketing tools

There are many, many, many social bookmarking sites… and they each have their strong points, and frankly I use different ones for different reasons.

Delicious.com- This site has gone through a recent upgrade, but has been my ‘workhorse’ bookmarking site, low tech, simple, and easy to use. Delicious’s toolbar widget, makes it easy to browse and save your research. It’s not fashion-centric, and you can opt not to share your information as well.

Stylehive- A great place to keep individual finds, like a pair of shoes, or a dress, etc.. along with pricing information. It’s also a great place to find inspiration that others have found. Blog participation is also encouraged on Stylehive. Toolbar widget available.

ThisNext- A shopping site where you can store ‘recommendations’ and share them with your friends. Also good for finding other recommendations. Toolbar widget available.

Stumbleupon- This is mostly for finding sites you like and sharing it with other people. Really good for research, and also it’s good for blog marketing (via submitting blog posts).

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