As a newbie to the world of social bookmarking not too long ago, I was pretty confused about what it all was.  I wasn’t quite sure what to make of all the rankings and what exactly it meant to me.  There were the stumble this’s, the digg that’s, the reddit’s, the ma.gnolia’s, and what’s so del.icio.us about a website?

Maybe I’m off-base here, but I’m guessing there are others out there who could use some help too.  In essence, social bookmarking sites let you keep track of stuff you come across that you may want to check out at a later time.  They allow you to save those sites to your own account, and they allow you to check out others who may have similar interests.  Now, without further ado, here are the basics of each of the big ones:

• Digg: A great place to keep up with current events, Digg.com lets you see what’s big news these days.  Posts to digg can be anything and everything, from entire websites to blog posts to articles and videos.  Members have the ability to “digg” posts to bump them up in the popularity ranks, as well as the ability to “bury” posts.  These days, there’s a strong political leaning to the posts, but you can also find a variety of other goodies if you look around.  The interface is excellent for learning your way around social networking sites: getting to the posts, voting posts up or down, and commenting are all easy to handle.
• Del.icio.us: On first glance, del.icio.us seems a bit bland.  White backgrounds, black and blue lettering, and that’s about it.  Now that I’ve been playing with it for a while, it’s actually become one of my favorites.  It’s can be a great surprise when you click on a link since there’s no real indication of what you’re about to see, aside from what others have written as descriptions or tags.  Some members leave detailed descriptions of what the websites are about, but typically people just save the link with a few words to help them remember why they were interested in the first place.  I’ve gotten to the point where I like to see what’s popular, and just start saving links that may be of interest to me - then checking them out later on when I actually have time.
• Ma.gnolia: Ma.gnolia.com is similar to del.icio.us, but has the added bonus of a large community where you can create groups and save contacts.  Members are encouraged to discuss what they’ve found via forums.  The groups are helpful to keep track of what everyone else is up to.  The load time of pages is a bit slow, but it’s nice to be able to associate people with pictures (or avatars, if they so choose).
• Reddit: Reddit is another one with a less-than-spectacular interface for viewing, but again, it lets you know what’s hot and what’s not these days.  Similar to digg, it allows members to vote stories up and down.  Reddit tends to have a technical leaning to it, with many articles on programming and gaming.  There are some other fliers though - like right now, there are links to free South Park episodes, an article about the economic stimulus checks, and some medical articles.
• StumbleUpon: These days, I always feel like I’m promoting StumbleUpon.  I enjoy wandering the internet for anything and everything, and make off-handled comments about how I “stumbled upon so-and-so today”.  What a brilliant marketing ploy!  StumbleUpon has a nice combination of website thumbnails to go along with the links so you have an idea of what you’re getting yourself into.  StumbleUpon lets you check out websites, people, and videos.  You can send someone a message straight through their own personalized StumbleUpon page (which you also get when you sign up).  Stumble seems to be a combination of del.icio.us and ma.gnolia, and gives you a great place to start building up your online community.

Hopefully I’ve managed to get the big ones.  If you have any thoughts or questions, give me a holler!