Social bookmarking is the process of saving bookmarks to the World Wide Web instead of just to your web browser. Once they're saved, you can view them at any time and from any place. What makes bookmarking even more significant is that it not only allows you to share your bookmarks with your friends, family members and even strangers, but it lets you access and view bookmarks that others have left.

When would social bookmarking be specifically helpful? Imagine you're a struggling intern studying medicine. A lot of your time is going to be spent doing research online through RSS feeds, email newsletters and search engine results. While you've always been able to save your bookmarks in organized folders in the past, you're now finding this to be not as efficient as in the past.

It works great when it's done on the school computer and you're in school accessing it, but where is it when you're on your home computer. It would be your perfect solution here. Your bookmarks would also be where you could easily find them. If you have a study partner, you can both share your study notes and research through social bookmarking.

With social bookmarking, you have a web of connections and resources that goes beyond just being limited to certain folders and certain individuals. It's fantastic what it has done for the world and internet users.

What's the difference between bookmarking and social bookmarking? Bookmarking is saving the web address of a web site on your computer so you can view it later. You go to a page that you really like. You go to the top of the page and click on Favorites and Add to Favorites. It's that simple to bookmark on your computer.

It is when you're saving bookmarks to public website and giving them tag or keywords so they can be found later by you and others. This is done by registering with a social bookmarking site. You can make your tags private so only you can find them or public so they can be shared by the whole world.

Many people are using it today. While I may have given you the example of a student benefitting from social bookmarking, many people that wish to share their information with others are actually participating in it.

Its popularity as an "intelligent search engine" is another reason why it is used by so many. Why shuffle through thousands of search engine results to find what you're looking for when you can go to a social bookmarking site and find current information you need quickly? Social bookmarking is time saving, convenient and fun.