You see them here, you see them everywhere. Social Bookmarking links and icons to sites such as Digg, which encourage Internet users to save web pages of interest into an online storage area. This can be shared with other social addicts, rated and commented on. There are many available sites to choose from, all boasting wonderful community features.

Of course communities are a superb thing. Websites can be built upon or destroyed if the community aspect isn’t perfected, but it is this side of Social Bookmarking that really bugs me. When a story is shared in this way, you can receive a lot of interest, which of course equals hits. Great, that is exactly what we as writers want to see, but there is a problem with this exposure believe it or not.

Many of these Social Bookmarking sites have comment areas for each of the bookmarks. This doesn’t link to your comments area, but instead is a separate entity they host and maybe even will miss unless you track or even check your referrals. I do have a problem with this. Working together is absolutely wonderful, but when you lose out on comments and sometimes even worse you read ones that totally miss the point due to readers only viewing a small quote rather than the whole article, provides many misgivings and misunderstanding.

As the original author, the yearning to respond is high, considerably when you notice these individuals who post complete and utter rubbish responses and when you can clearly see they haven’t taken the time to read the entire article. The ‘I know best’ attitude that can sweep through these websites with the faceless and anonymous avatars that appear frequently.

We all desire greater exposure on the Internet, fighting off the many millions of websites also vying for position, but we are in fact breeding the quick fix digest rather than the full three course meal. They are the centralised hub of excellence, hopefully promoting the intellectual thoughts over the dull and dreary, but at what price? There must be another way? Isn’t there a way to keep the comments in the originators post that can then be displayed, so that everyone benefits and if not why not?