Although we’ve been busy adding features to SharingLinks, it’s been awhile since I sent out email update. Some of these features are many weeks old, but I figure if you haven’t started using them yet, then they are still new to you! Here goes.

1) My Tags ButtonSince your tags are so important, we’ve added a My Tags button on the navigation that will take you directly to a list of all your tags. If you are new to tags, and are more accustomed to sorting your bookmarks into folders, you can think of these tags as your folders. But tags are more versatile, because a bookmark can easily have multiple tags, where it would be impossible to be in multiple folders (without creating duplicate bookmarks.)

Now your favorite fifth grade math links can be tagged both “mathâ€? and “grade 5″. For more on using the boolean + (and) with your tags, read this blog post Combing Tags ( http://blog.sharinglinks.com/combining-tags/52/ )

2) New Search Options

In the drop-down box for the search function, we have added a “tag� search. Now options include searching your bookmarks, your tags, all bookmarks and all tags. This will give you an easy way to jump directly to a tag page.

Keep in mind, the “search bookmarks� function will usually return more results than “search tag� because it also looks for the search phrase in titles and descriptions. Here’s two examples searching for “thanksgiving�:

For example, the search for Thanksgiving is:
http://www.sharinglinks.com/search/all/thanksgiving

And the list of bookmarks tagged Thanksgiving is:
http://www.sharinglinks.com/tags/thanksgiving

3) View All Tags

One of the best ways to discover new sites, is to click on users that have interesting bookmarks. For example, if something from user wildnis catches your attention, you can click on his username (his profile reveals that he is a he!) and find:

http://www.sharinglinks.com/bookmarks/wildnis

From here, you might notice the tag “photography� and if you click on it, will bring up all of wildnis’s photography bookmarks

http://www.sharinglinks.com/bookmarks/wildnis/photography

But what if you want to explore the tag “photography� from all users, not just wildis? That’s what the “View All: photography� link in the orange header bar is for. It means viewing the tag for all users (not just the current user you are browsing).

Clicking on it will take you to:
http://www.sharinglinks.com/tags/photography

4) Bookmarks Sorted by Popularity

Right at the top, in addition to sort by Date, Title, or URL, we’ve added Popularity. This sorts bookmarks by how many members have the exact same one. I have already gotten questions about why two seemingly similar URLs are not counted as the same. The answer is that (for or for worse) our program considers “domain.com/index.htm� different from “domain.com�.

Although there are a few more new features, I think this post is already way too long. Your comments welcome below.

Dear Barbara,
I like your new tagline.  You may want to consider using the ‘Share Links’ as the last item in the sequence.  It is your name and that way it functions as the payoff.  And anyway the natural order of events might logically be to save links,  discover new links and then share them with others.  Just a thought…

Best,
Christine Flaherty
Marketing Manager
Weston Woods Studios
Norwalk, CT 

Dear Christine,

You are so right!  Thanks for writing.  I have taken your advice, and changed the tagline so that “Share Links” is last.  Thank you for sharing your “marketing talent.”

Barbara

When browsing a tag page at SharingLinks.com such as this one for Thanksgiving:

http://www.sharinglinks.com/tags/thanksgiving 

You can narrow down the list by adding addition tags such as “crafts” or “teachers” by clicking on the plus sign in the Related Tags box on the right.

http://www.sharinglinks.com/tags/thanksgiving+crafts

You can use this technique to add grade level tags to your posts, then drill down by adding tags together such as “science” and  “grades 3-6″.   Simply use the + as a boolean add operator to string your tags together. This is just one tagging technique that can be used for those accustomed to using folders and sub-folders.  The benefit of tagging is that a bookmark can have multiple tags, and virtually be in both the “science folder” and the  “grades 3-6″ folder at the same time.

Surfnetkids readers have  shared over 25,000 bookmarks at SharingLinks.com. Wow!  Thank you so much for venturing into new spaces with me.  More good stuff is still to come.  Stay tuned.