Right, so Reddit and Delicious are two more social bookmarking sites. They work the same way as Technorati, really. And StumbleUpon. And Digg. All these sites are very similar indeed. You register, you see the list of sites that people have given the thumbs up (ie marked as a favorite, submitted, or whatever wording that particular site uses). The more people like something, the higher up the list it goes. With Reddit, the set-up is, in terms of format and font, pretty old school. It's not very pretty and it's just a list of links. But they do have a very cute little icon:

<-- this little creature is the Reddit icon. So, yes, these are two other social bookmarking sites.....you bookmark, other people bookmark, and hey presto you get to see the sites that are the most bookmarked. (One advantage of using one of these sites to hold your bookmarks is that you can access them from anywhere, not just your home or work computer. Also, you won't lose your favorites/bookmarks if your computer dies!)I still prefer StumbleUpon because you don't need to go back to the StumbleUpon page to find links. With the others, it seems to me, you always have to return to their page to browse through pages that are popular. With StumbleUpon, you just keep clicking the "Stumble" button on your address bar, so you don't need to go back to a central page. Just to make that clear, here is a screen shot of the StumbleUpon buttons: (Incidentally, if you want to make a screenshot and don't know how - find the button on your keyboard on the right hand top side which says "PrtScn" and press it once. Then open "paint", which is under accessories in the start menu, and go to edit-->paste. It will paste in your screenshot. You can also paste it into PowerPoint directly.)

Also, if you want to read more about StumbleUpon, Technorati or Digg, see my previous posts. (you can find them by looking at the right hand side of this page under my labels.)

So yesterday I looked into Digg. It's pretty much the same thing as StumbleUpon, except it doesn't seem to have a button you can put on your address bar. Both sites are an easy way to search for website that might interest you. With StumbleUpon, you indicate what you're interested in (arts, finance, etc) and you just click the StumbleUpon button and it randomly takes you to sites that are in those categories. With Digg, you go to the Digg website, register (for free) and on the Digg website you click on the sites in categories that you are interested in and they open in a new window.
The advantage to StumbleUpon is that you don't have to open a new window and you can mark the site as "I like it" or "I don't like it" without leaving the site itself. With Digg, you have to go back to the Digg website and click on "Digg it" next to the entry for that site. That's not terribly difficult, but it is one extra step.
The advantage of Digg, though, is that you can easily add the "Digg it" button to your own site or blog. I tried to do that with StumbleUpon and I couldn't figure it out. I think it's possible, but maybe it's not compatible with Blogger or something. I figure if it takes that long to figure out, most people won't do it. The "Digg it" button is easy to add (you can see it on the right hand side of my blog). Of course....that's only useful if people recognise it, otherwise they'll just ignore it. Same goes for the Technorati button to add to favorites....but it's nice to give visitors the option if they do use those sites.
If you click the Digg it button and someone has already submitted the site as interesting, then your click will just add one to the number of people who digg the site, thus pushing it up the rankings on the Digg website. If nobody has yet submitted the site, then you will get a very simple page asking you to write a short reason why the site is interesting.
Just to test how it all works, I submitted one of my Etsy listing as fascinating (well I had to use something!) and it got another 15 or so views within a minute or so. That's because when a new site is submitted, it *briefly* shows up on the top of the Digg listings for its category. But these views short lived and are unlikely to do your business much good. On the other hand, it won't do it any harm either.
And that's the sort of technical news for today.
While clicking through StumbleUpon, I came across this photo from a presumably Chinese artist - a pretty impressive table and a very clever idea: