The Procrastinator’s Pitstop

Throughout my years of working in Social Media, the topic has repeatedly turned to the subject of Social Bookmarking.  If you’re like me, you’ve probably heard some of the following questions too:

• I don’t understand how to do it?
• Why would I want to post that?
• Can search engines spider these links?
• I just don’t understand, why would anyone want to see my favorite sites?

Well today, some of the biggest social bookmarking sites are upping the anti.  A prime example is Reddit, a leading name in the space, who has announced the creation of a new feature that allows you to utilize an open source version that can be hosted on your own domain with customizable features including look and feel.  

According to Mashable.com, the move follows news last week that Ma.gnolia was going open source, and word earlier this summer that Digg is working on their own offering to let users create their own custom social news sites.

While some argue that social bookmarking is dying, the new wave of open source versions allow the general public to add customizable platforms to expand their own sites, thus breathing new life into the art of tagging sites for the benefit of an entire community.

I don’t know if this is a sign of how scary technology can be, or how frightening stupid today’s youth is.

In Spain, a teenager posted an open invite to her 16th birthday bash on the popular social networking site Facebook.  Over 400 people saw the invitation, and crashed the bash at the $8.6 million dollar mansion where they stole thousands of dollars worth of jewelry and designer clothes in addition to throwing a tv in the estate’s swimming pool. 

As Fox News reported, “The place looked like a war zone,” one partygoer said. “All the banisters have been broken. The walls are ruined, the carpets are destroyed, furniture is broken and it is going to take months to sort out.”

 While the estate’s owners have incredible damages to repair over the summer, they are also going to miss out on the $8,000 a month that they usually receive for renting the mansion out over the summer.  Can you say “grounded”?