Site-Hype

You use a search engine when you know what you are looking for. You need a starting point, a keyword or phrase. In the old days of internet this was also the way to surf. You just entered a random word and then hopped on the virtual surf board at random and continued to click links.

In their minds

From a mindset perspective, there is a huge difference between Search and Surf. When searching you let your brain do part of the work and then the search engine take care of the rest. When surfing you don’t want to think before you get results back. Surfing needs a more tailored tool than a search engine and here enters Social bookmarking.
You are offered content via the behavior and thinking that others have done for you. In social bookmarking you also have the option to share your ideas, comments and favorites back to the community, basically do some thinking for others.

The starting point of web sessions with no other agenda than killing time has for this reason shifted from the search engines, like Google, Yahoo and MSN to social bookmarking sites like Stumbleupon, Reddit and Mixx. This is where casual surfers find the cool new stuff, blogs and trends.

The reason for writing this blogpost is to point out the importance of existing in the Social bookmarking world. This is where you have the opportunity to tell the casual surfer what she should focus her attention on.