Del.icio.us (pronounced “delicious”) is one of my favorite social bookmarking sites. Basically, it’s a place for you to save, or “bookmark,” interesting sites that you’ve visited so you can return to them later. You also have the option of sharing your bookmarks with others.

When you bookmark a page, you can change the name and add a description and keywords, or “tags,” if you desire. These can really come in handy for searching when the number of sites you bookmark start adding up.

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Digg.com is one of my new favorite websites. Essentially Digg is a site where readers submit content (videos, pictures, blog posts, or websites) that they feel is interesting, important, or entertaining and other readers can choose to agree that the content is valuable (”Digg” the content), ignore it, or “Bury” it (mark it as uninteresting or false).

When you first visit Digg’s homepage, you’ll see the “front page” Digg stories that have been made popular by fellow users. In fact, you can see ten of those front page stories in the widget below:

If you like one of the stories, you can just click the Digg link. (You’ll need to create a free user account on Digg.)

All of the information on Digg is broken down into one of eight categories each with their own sub-categories. You are able to filter out stories from these categories.

When you visit a blog or other website, you my encounter an icon like the one below:

This is the most common icon that bloggers use to encourage their readers to submit a story to Digg, or “digg” it if it has already been submitted. If you have a site and would like to incorporate these tools, you can check out this link for resources.

If you’re curious for more information, here’s the link to Digg on Wikipedia.

Slashdot is a science- and technology-related news website with articles submitted by users. User’s can comment on the articles that are posted. There is a rather confusing methodology to how posts, comments, and other content on Slashdot are compiled and moderated. If you’re curious, you can read the Wikipedia entry here, which goes into quite a bit of detail.

The URL for Slashdot is http://slashdot.org, and is quite difficult to pronounce. The content found there is pretty geeky (their tag line is “News for nerds. Stuff that matters.”) so I would say that it’s far from mainstream.

Clicking the icon that appears at the bottom of these posts will take you to a Slashdot page where you can save the post as a bookmark and, optionally, submit it to Slashdot for consideration as a story.

Stay tuned for more posts about social bookmarking.

If you are the owner of a website, it means you’ve probably got something to say to people or show people. Increasing viewership of your website is a goal that almost all of us share.

So, you’ve told your friends, family, and your colleagues…heck, maybe you even tell people you pass on the street how cool your new website is…but, let’s face it, that’s only going to get you so far. With so many people out there on the Internet, there’s bound to be some people out there who are interested in what you have to say or show.

One of the main ways information is shared now on the internet is through social bookmarking sites. Many of you may already be a part of this phenomenon and not realize it. For example, the popular social networking site Facebook has, among other things, a feature that allows you to share interesting sites and content.

You may have noticed this graphic: at the bottom of most of my posts. It contains links to allow you to share the content you read in my blog posts on some of the most popular social bookmarking sites. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be discussing each of them in detail. Check back often, and, if you find the content interesting, subscribe to my blog either through the RSS feed or email notification.

Today marks the premier of my “Scott Rouse Digital” Facebook Page.

Almost everyone today is familiar, at least to some point, with the existence and popularity of Facebook. According to their own “about” page, “Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.” Founded in 2004, Facebook was initially available only to college students. Today, according to their own figures:

• There are 61 million active users (users who have returned to the site in the last 30 days)
• More than 50 percent of Facebook users return to the site each day
• More than half of Facebook users are outside of college and their fastest growing demographic is those 25 years old and older

Because of these facts, anyone wishing to increase their visibility on the web simply cannot ignore the value of marketing on Facebook. Facebook offers “flyers” and other paid advertisements, but anyone can start out with free techniques such as building a Facebook Page.

A Facebook “profile” is intended for an individual (read: actual human) whereas a “page” is designed to represent a brand, company, or organization. Just like in a profile, page admins can post pictures, videos, wall posts, events, and more. Instead of having “friends,” a page has “fans.” You are able to send “updates,” or messages, to fans of your page.

Administrators of a page are provided access to basic traffic information (or “insights”) related to their page. This can help a bit in tracking the popularity of your page.

More to come in the future about the importance of social bookmarking and sharing, but, for now, why not become a fan of my Facebook Page?