Social Bookmarking - A Little History

Social bookmarking got it's start in the mid 1990s when a company called itList was launched. It provided a tool that allowed users to collect their bookmarked sites in folders and either display them publicly or keep them private. With the VC fervor that came about just before the turn of the century, several new bookmarking sites came into play -- Blink, Backflip and others -- most with a few new tweaks of their own. The dot-com bust knocked everyone out of play, and it really wasn't until 3 years later that bookmark sites came back into vogue. The site Del.icio.us was launched in 2003 and today still maintains a strong presense in the bookmarking space, currently ranking in the #10 position in monthly traffic in the latest BuzzMarker.com tracking guide.

Others soon followed suit, and in 2008 there are more than 125 documented social bookmarking sites in operation, with more being added every day. One recent entry just gaining traction is a site called friendfeed.com, which seems to be very similar to the popular twitter.com service. One key difference is that while Twitter allows only 140 character per post, Friendfeed has unlimited space. It will be interesting to see how those battle it out and also to see if new players show up.