Social Bookmarking Sites

This chapter presents two representative examples of social bookmarking sites: CiteULike and BibSonomy. These sites are the embodiment of the folksonomy philosophy because they aspire to create an information resource which rests exclusively on the participation of its users through the posting and tagging of documents, resulting in a self-organized information system. However, the evolution of each has been opposed, taking them on different courses. While CiteULike was spreading across countries and disciplines, BibSonomy headed to becoming a specialized tool for computer scientists and limited to German-speaking countries. However, at the time that CiteULike is recording a deep stagnation with the gradual slowdown of its functions, Bibsonomy survives with high activity in a small niche. This chapter describes the principal functionalities of each service and analyses quantitatively their document repository, social instruments and user profiles.