Social Networking Tags on HCW -Please use them

[hotcouponmama]

Hey all,

In the bottom of each post, you'll see social networking tags for digg, delicious, etc.

These are your way of recommending the site, a particular post, thread, etc to others. And it helps with the indexing of the site in several ways. And, hopefully, we'll get some other like-minded people finding HCW as a result.

So if you find a post you like, please be sure to use those icons in the post. You'll find them on the bottom left corner of the post. And I haven't checked yet, but I think they are in the blog posts as well.

Note that you do need to be a member of those sites to recommend posts to others.

Thanks!

[hotcouponmama]

I just posted in the announcement section that they are social networking tags.

Basically, you can "rate" and suggest a post to others in larger communities like digg, delicious, furl and technorati - and then others can see the posts outside HCW.

You have to be logged in to those sites to recommend the posts, but it's a great way for us to show what couponing is about to others, so if people are inclined to help support the site in that way, it helps us in lots of categoris like search and more.

[Mikki 316]

Thanks! I don't check other sites, so maybe I should do that so I can link to HCW.

[cuzisaidso]

Also, you can click Linkback at the top of the thread and bookmark the whole thread.

[JANE4girls]

so you click on them and it does what? lol

[hotcouponmama]

You click on them, if you are enrolled at the other site, and you can index a thread here over there so that others can find it. If lots of people are indexing your blog for example as a "must read" blog, people at those other 4 sites can find it, read it, find HCW, etc.
But you do have to have an account for each site.

More and more, it's a way of cross referencing pages from sites all over the net - it's a different way to search besides google. And then the content isn't usually some of the spammy crap you get when you do a google search - since it's user generated and added to those sites, it's usually real content, not just weird home pages with ads and redirects that you sometimes get with google.

And since it's tagged by the user:

(Jane's blog - groceries food coupons money-saving etc)

then when another user searches, the content is more relevant to your search.

[JANE4girls]

awesome...I will start clicking away!

[love2cook]

I don't mean to sound dumb but what are these other 4 sites?

[buddysmom]

I don't mean to sound dumb but what are these other 4 sites?

Same here - I dont get it. What kind of sites are they?

[queenofthehivemomof5]

What is Digg?

Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users. You won’t find editors at Digg — we’re here to provide a place where people can collectively determine the value of content and we’re changing the way people consume information online.

How do we do this? Everything on Digg — from news to videos to images to Podcasts — is submitted by our community (that would be you). Once something is submitted, other people see it and Digg what they like best. If your submission rocks and receives enough Diggs, it is promoted to the front page for the millions of our visitors to see.

And it doesn’t stop there. Because Digg is all about sharing and discovery, there’s a conversation that happens around the content. We’re here to promote that conversation and provide tools for our community to discuss the topics that they’re passionate about. By looking at information through the lens of the collective community on Digg, you’ll always find something interesting and unique. We’re committed to giving every piece of content on the web an equal shot at being the next big thing.

What is del.icio.us?

del.icio.us is a collection of favorites - yours and everyone else's. You can use del.icio.us to:

• Keep links to your favorite articles, blogs, music, reviews, recipes, and more, and access them from any computer on the web.
• Share favorites with friends, family, coworkers, and the del.icio.us community.
• Discover new things. Everything on del.icio.us is someone's favorite -- they've already done the work of finding it. So del.icio.us is full of bookmarks about technology, entertainment, useful information, and more. Explore and enjoy.

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website -- the primary use of del.icio.us is to store your bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too. On del.icio.us, you can use tags to organize and remember your bookmarks, which is a much more flexible system than folders.

You can also use del.icio.us to see the interesting links that your friends and other people bookmark, and share links with them in return. You can even browse and search del.icio.us to discover the cool and useful bookmarks that everyone else has saved -- which is made easy with tags.
All you need is a browser and an internet connection. Sound good? Here's how to get started. If you'd like to find out more, keep reading.
What can I use del.icio.us for?

del.icio.us is an open-ended system, so you decide how you want to use it. Here are examples of things you can do with saving bookmarks on del.icio.us:

• Research - Writing an article? Researching an industry? Slaving away on your dissertation? Use del.icio.us to keep track of all the source materials and commentary that you find online.
• Wishlist - Go to any commerce site, find what you like, save it to del.icio.us and tag it as wishlist. Then you can tell people to check out your wishlist bookmarks by giving them a link to del.icio.ususername/wishlist .
• Podcast - Want to hear some great podcasts? Visit the mp3+podcast tag combination and start listening. Are you a podcaster? Start posting your mp3 files to del.icio.us and we will create an RSS feed for you.
• Vacation - Planning a trip? Save links to hotels, activities, and transportation and use tags like "travel", "vacation", and "to-visit". Collaborate with friends and family by using the "for:username" tag.
• Linklog - Save bookmarks to interesting websites and add a bit of commentary to create a lightweight linklog. Then, use linkrolls or the daily blog posting feature to include your del.icio.us bookmarks on your blog or website.
• Cookbook - Whenever you find a great recipe on a website, save it to del.icio.us. Tag it with the recipe's ingredients or style of cooking, and then when you're wondering what to make for dinner, you can use your saved bookmarks to help you remember the perfect recipe.
• Collaboration - Friends, coworkers, and other groups can use a shared account, special tag, or their del.icio.us networks to collect and organize bookmarks that are relevant -- and useful -- to the entire group.

What do those buzzwords mean, anyway?

What is social bookmarking?

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website, which means it is designed to allow you to store and share bookmarks on the web, instead of inside your browser. This has several advantages.
First, you can get to your bookmarks from anywhere, no matter whether you're at home, at work, in a library, or on a friend's computer.
Second, you can share your bookmarks publicly, so your friends, coworkers, and other people can view them for reference, amusement, collaboration, or anything else. (Note that you can also mark bookmarks on del.icio.us as private -- only viewable by you -- if you like.)
Third, you can find other people on del.icio.us who have interesting bookmarks and add their links to your own collection. Everyone on del.icio.us chooses to save their bookmarks for a reason. You have access to the links that everyone wants to remember. You can see whether two people have chosen to remember a link, or whether it was useful enough for a thousand people to remember -- which may help you find things that are useful for you, too.
What are tags?

Tags are one-word descriptors that you can assign to your bookmarks on del.icio.us. They're a little bit like keywords but non-hierarchical. You can assign as many tags to a bookmark as you like and easily rename or delete them later. Tagging can be a lot easier and more flexible than fitting your information into preconceived categories or folders.
Find out more about tags, including some examples and ideas about how you can use them.
OK, what do I do next?

Here's how to get started with del.icio.us.
Learn more about the del.icio.us team.

Welcome to Technorati

Currently tracking 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media.

Technorati is the recognized authority on what's happening on the World Live Web, right now. The Live Web is the dynamic and always-updating portion of the Web. We search, surface, and organize blogs and the other forms of independent, user-generated content (photos, videos, voting, etc.) increasingly referred to as “citizen media.”

But it all started with blogs. A blog, or weblog, is a regularly updated journal published on the web. Some blogs are intended for a small audience; others vie for readership with national newspapers. Blogs are influential, personal, or both, and they reflect as many topics and opinions as there are people writing them.

Blogs are powerful because they allow millions of people to easily publish and share their ideas, and millions more to read and respond. They engage the writer and reader in an open conversation, and are shifting the Internet paradigm as we know it.

On the World Live Web, bloggers frequently link to and comment on other blogs, creating the type of immediate connection one would have in a conversation. Technorati tracks these links, and thus the relative relevance of blogs, photos, videos etc. We rapidly index tens of thousands of updates every hour, and so we monitor these live communities and the conversations they foster.
T
he World Live Web is incredibly active, and according to Technorati data, there are over 175,000 new blogs (that’s just blogs) every day. Bloggers update their blogs regularly to the tune of over 1.6 million posts per day, or over 18 updates a second.

Technorati. Who's saying what. Right now.

About Furl...


Furl is a free service that saves the important items you find on the Web and enables you to quickly find them again. Furl archives a personal copy of every page you save. When you want to recall it, you can find it instantly by searching the full text your archived items. Each member has a personal archive of 5 gigabytes (GB), large enough to store tens of thousands of searchable items.

Furl recommends new Web pages that may interest you, guided by the sites you've already "Furled," or saved.

Furl also offers the best ways to share the content you find on the Web. Send a daily email newsletter of links to friends and colleagues, use Furl to generate RSS feeds for your links, or integrate them quickly and easily into an existing Web site.

Furl was founded in the spring of 2003 by Mike Giles, and is part of the LookSmart family. For more information, please see LookSmart's About Us

Basicially guys what these sites are are social bookmarking sites which allows you to share posts and blogs that you find interesting with the members on these sites. Doing this is totaly volentary and not everyone will do that, but there are some on the site that are into that. It helps our site reach more people in the end.