When del.icio.us users save a Web page as a bookmark, they're "voting" for the page, much as Google's PageRank measures how popular a page is by counting incoming links. But with social bookmarks, individuals vote. With social sites, everyone votes, not just Webmasters and bloggers. Since individual Internet users vastly outnumber Webmasters or bloggers, the collective wisdom is much richer.
Once someone mentions you on del.icio.us--by bookmarking your book, your blog, or your Web site--it's much easier for people to find you, and you'll get a new stream of people coming to your site who are already interested in what you have to say.
You can hope that people will take it on themselves to bookmark you on del.icio.us, or you can make it easy for them. You can configure your blog to automatically insert a small #add to del.icio.us# button to the bottom of all your posts. Every reader who clicks the button casts another vote for you. For instructions on adding these buttons, see:
#www.publisher.yahoo.com/ social_media_tools#
Del.icio.us was purchased by Yahoo in 2005.