It's always useful to know people's surfing habits if you build websites.
I test alot of web startups mainly because I like to see them from a designers point of view, some are very handy and some are a waste of space. As far as social bookmarking go's
del.icio.us is one of the most popular, I myself can't stand it's lack of aesthetics, it's has a horrible layout. In contrast
ma.gnolia is well designed and the layout is nice and clean and easy to use. The reason the social part of ma.gnolia doesn't work for me is not many people use it so the sharing of bookmarks doesn't work as well as it should.
Technorati on the other hand is one of my favorite sites on the net, it's design is near perfect and it works really well, being a blogger it's important that you separate your blogging directories and searches from all the other sites on the net and technorati achieve this with great link tools and a fast pinging service.
The reason I asked people what they were using is because to help the users of these site I installed social bookmarking and sharing as a feature, like any feature it has to be refined to the most popular sites. Stumbleupon is used massively in the design industry by young designers that want to get their work seen. Mr Wong however has minimal usage in the UK and the US where most of my visitors come from so installing the Mr Wong button would be pointless, most users here won't even be aware that it exists.
It was a case of narrowing it down to the most used social sites and installing those for peoples use. I'm a big believer in social sites that are used for their correct purpose which is sharing, a thing people find harder and harder to do in recent times, many people still sit in front of a computer waiting for it to give them something, that's why one of the most popular search terms is 'free'.
This is why getting groups of people with the same interests together to share is one of the most important new features of the web as it evolves. It's about giving back to some of the people who can't battle with
SEO to get their sites noticed. Graphic Design and Stumbleupon is a great example of this.
http://www.estetica-design-forum.com...c-design-forum
Most of the threads I've started in here are graphic designers I have been sent via
netvibes or discovered thanks to the social side of
stumbleupon for people who haven't used it, stumbleupon feeds you random sites people have recommended on a certain subject. Type in Graphic Design and it will feed you sites that other graphic designers like. The major bonus for this is most graphic designers have minimal
SEO skills and suffer in the regular google rankings, you may have to go through over 50 pages in Google to find some of these designers sites for that very reason. But Stumbleupon is the art of user driven sites, designers giving other designers sites about design.
Also the minute people realize that giving back to the internet can benefit them just as much as taking from the internet that's when you're onto a winner. For example....
Frozen Cherry Trees
I was sent via netvibes a nice set of photo's of some frozen cherry trees, I quite like things like this so I enter them on the forum to share with anybody else who has an interest. Somebody then clicks the stumbleupon button at the bottom left of the post and posts it to their stumble profile, their contacts and social circles also see the thread and forward on to their contact etc. All of a sudden thousands of people are flocking to see the thread thus offering great exposure not only for the pictures but also for the forum gaining us more members who can in turn share their interesting pictures and designs and the circle continues.
The only flaw in this process is the person that sent me the pictures can't seem to find where they came from and who the photographer was. In my ideal web that photographer should have their link at the bottom of the pictures offering this wave of traffic a chance to see more of their work and so on. (If anybody knows or can find out it would still be nice).
Hope that gives you a small insight into why social bookmarking & sharing is important on the ever changing internet, there are 1000's of new startups all trying to better the last release by someone else so they are improving, all I can say is try them you'll be surprised how good some of the lesser known ones are.
And remember the key word is Social. People that write these off as a waste of time usually turn out to be not very social types and the sort that want the internet to give them things without giving back.
This is a good link to add to netvibes it feeds all the new startups through as they're released.
Go2Web20