Online networking and social bookmarking are all the rage today. It can be hard to know which to choose, however, because there are so many of them. That’s where social media reviews come in. When reading these reviews, though, you may find that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some might fight for their particular choices tooth and claw. That might be because they were ignorant of the options, so they invested all their time without further discovery. Some of those who are adamant about their choice don’t even know the difference business networking, social bookmarking sites or sites that offer social networking just for fun. Many people don’t know that there also are online social media sites, like Capazoo, that pay for people to use and promote them.

Many people aren’t aware of the distinction between online social networks because the features and uses overlap. As an example, HubPages can be used for either business networking or to just have fun. There are thousands upon thousands of user-driven free social networking communities, such as Book Market, which specialize in focused interests. These sites are really where the rubber hits the road when it comes to online social networking because they’re created by users and focus on distinct interests. Communities focused on niches, such as book readers, abound. Online social networks , like LibraryThing have book reviews and other features created just for people who love to read. Another powerful form of online social networking is social bookmarking, because it opens up new worlds of information storage and retrieval. Sites that feature social bookmarking, such as Mister Wong, allow logged-in users to save their online bookmarks for free. Social bookmarking sites also are a great help to Web searchers, because tags that allow for easy searching can be assigned to each bookmark. The ability to use keyword tagging also is of value to Web marketers, who use them to garner backlinks for their blog posts and Web sites. One social bookmark doesn’t really mean anything in terms of backlinks but when there are many of them, search traffic often increases. As with Mixx, when a link is posted on these web properties, it can often rank high in Google if the person who submitted it understands how to research keyword tags and has entered the listing properly.

The boundaries are made even more murky with sites like Digg, which are set up for both social networking and social bookmarking. They are used for bookmarking but also are equally great for marketing and socializing. Business and personal contacts galore are just waiting to be discovered on these sites and blog posts featured on these online social networking sites have the potential to rank well in Google and other search engines. Tremendous benefits such as these are the reason people who make their livings online love online social media sites.