Social Bookmarking: What Is Your Motivation For Voting?

One of the distractions of social bookmarking is the ‘voting’ component. Every bookmarking site has some form of voting, whether it is a thumb, a Digg or a Sphinn, it all the same. What motivates you to vote?

If you were to vote every link to that came over to you, you would be there all day reading and voting so my next question is, how many of these requests do you actually read? To be honest, I read very few. I read the title that is sent to me, and, if it catches my attention I may check it out. Otherwise I totally ignore it.

Today, with life so busy and so many articles and posts that could be read, I have found that voting on requested links simply clogs up my bookmarks. At one stage I had so many links bookmarked that I found it easier to store important links that I wanted to return to in my browsers bookmarks.

Now I am little more circumspect. I only add links to my social bookmarks if they interest me or if they contain information that may be useful at a later date. The true intent of social bookmarking was to bookmark your own interests. You could then share them with others if you desired.

If you liked what I liked then perhaps there is an opportunity to network and share other ‘finds’. As social bookmarking sites have become corrupted by ‘voting’ and reaching ‘front page’ status, the number of artificial votes has increased. We no longer ‘vote’ because we like what we see, we ‘vote’ because we like who made the request.

When someone requests a vote, do you read the material before voting?