2006: The Year of Social Bookmarking.
2006 will be known as the year that social bookmarking exploded. Sure the concept of social bookmarking has been prevalent for some time now, however socially driven news has become more popular than ever and there are a number of factors that make this evident.
The first is the adoption of social bookmarking by the mainstream media. Increasingly online news papers and television news broadcasters are integrating social bookmarking tools into their online content. Such is the influence of social bookmarking that the New York Times has introduced tools to their articles allowing users to post NY Times articles to sites such as Digg, Facebook and Newsvine without having to leave the site.
Social bookmarking sites continue to post strong growth in traffic but the explosion of social bookmarking has seen the introduction of several new websites in 2006. Newsvine appeared early on in the year and managed to create a niche by allowing users to express themselves in ways not seen in previous news aggregators and social bookmarking websites. As a result of this the site enjoyed a healthy adoption rate which saw traffic steadily increase throughout the remainder of the year.
Although not an entirely new site Facebook introduced social bookmarking functionality to its users which resulted in solid growth in traffic to the site. This reinforces the growing importance of Web 2.0 technologies and highlights the shift from static sites (Web 1.0) to a more interactive online experience. 2006 saw the release of version 3 of Digg which for the first time has broken away from the grip of technology related material to include non IT news and categories for video content.
Not only did online giant Youtube smash expectations with its sale to Google for $1.65 billion but 2006 saw social bookmakers start to generate significant cash flows as a result of the value they add to the web. Netscape delved into the social bookmarking scene where they were willing to pay up to $1000 per month to the top contributors from Digg, Reddit and Newsvine to write on Netscape. Newsvine released an ad revenue-sharing model which saw the top writer taking away $400 per month. Even online auction house EBay got in on the action with the sale of the 75th ranked Digg account.
Thus with continuing growth in traffic, increased revenue from social bookmarking websites and the overwhelming up take of these technologies by consumers, it is clear that social bookmarking will significantly impact the way we source our news into the future.
