Delicious is a social bookmarking site where users can store, share, organize and manage their bookmarks. A research conducted in April 2009 shows that Delicious have more than 5.3 million users and 150 million bookmarked URLs. This site was found in 2003 by Joshua Schachter and acquired in 2005 by Yahoo! The main emphasis of this site is on the content and less on the actions of the other users; making content available on this site a quality content.

On Delicious users can -

• Tag bookmarks with keywords
• View other users public bookmarks
• Keep private bookmarks
• Search for tagged bookmarks
• See most-bookmarked sites
• Share bookmarks with other users

What are Tags?

Tags are one-word descriptors that you can assign to your bookmarks on Delicious. They help you to organize and remember them. Tags are a little bit like keywords, but you choose them yourself and they do not form a hierarchy. You can assign as many tags to a bookmark as you like and you can always rename or delete the tags later. Making it easier to search for the information you are looking for. For example - If you want to save a chocolate cake recipe, you can tag it with chocolate, recipe etc. So next time, when you are looking for the chocolate cake recipe, just search for the chocolate or recipe tag and you will find it in seconds.

Reasons for using Delicious

• It allows you to access your bookmarks from anywhere you have a web access
• You can continue to access your bookmarks even when your computer crashes or you get a new computer
• Easy to search your bookmarks by keywords and tags
• You can share your bookmarks / websites with your colleagues, peers etc
• Subscribe to other users Delicious bookmarks
• Keep yourself updated with popular sites and tags

How to work on Delicious?

• How to store bookmarks?
• Sign in to your Delicious account
• Click on "Save a new bookmark" which is located on the right side
• Enter the URL of the site, which you want to save, and click on the "Next" button
• Enter Title, Notes and Tags
• Click on the "Save" button


• How to keep your bookmarks private?
  By default, you bookmarks are visible to everyone. To make it private -
• Check "Do Not Share" before saving, when you are bookmarking the site or the page


• How to search for the link?
• Go to Delicious.com
• Search for a topic by entering keyword(s) in the search box in the top right hand corner. Example - health
• Review the list of results returned. You will see the number of times each resource has been saved as well as the tags that have been used to categorize it

How to promote your business on Delicious?

• Submit carefully
  Before submitting, make sure to fill all the information. Use relevant tags and add notes as it will help others find your story and bookmark it.
• Use popular tags
  Make sure to use popular tags. The tag cloud feature will help you to find about the popular tags. By using this feature you will be able to understand about people's likes and dislikes.
• Use Delicious button
  Use Delicious button on your site. It is a simple way through which people can bookmark your pages. The more people bookmark your pages, chances of your getting on the popular page is increased.
• Concentrate on the content
  The best way to get to the front page of Delicious is to specifically create a resource that Delicious users are likely to bookmark. As pages that become popular with delicious are tend to receive a lot of inbound links, which in turn, will help to rank well with search engine.
• Choose title carefully
  Many links that come as a result of Delicious popularity will use the post or page title in the anchor text. Title plays a very important role from SEO point of view.
• Submit on sites like Digg, Mixx etc.
  Try to get popular on other sites like Digg, Mixx etc as it will increase your chance of being popular on Delicious also.
• Use "Add to Del.icio.us" link
  Make sure to use "Add to Del.icio.us" link at the end of your blog post, articles etc. as it will increase the chances of your post being bookmarked.
• Grow your network on Delicious
  You can grow your network on Delicious either by including link to your Delicious page from your website, making it easy for others to add you . You can also use the Delicious official badge that Delicious provides for this purpose. Ask your friends who are del.icio.us users for their id and add them to your network.

Benefits of using Delicious

• Share your bookmarks with others
  Delicious allows you to share your bookmarks with other users. There are two ways to share your link(s) with other users
• Give people (with whom you want to share your bookmarks) the link to your public bookmarks. For example - http://www.delicious.com/kanikamalhotra
• Give people (with whom you want to share your bookmarks) the link to the specific tag in your bookmarks. For example - http://www.delicious.com/kanikamalhotra/health
In the above example, kanikamalhotra is a username and health is the tag. All the bookmarks tagged with health in kanikamalhotra's profile will be visible to you.


• Build a network
  Delicious helps you to build your network. If you find fellow users who are interested in the same topics as you are, you can add them to your network. Once you add them to your network, whenever you bookmark something that you would like to share with them, you will see them listed either under Network Tags as for:username, or under the People tab, depending on whether you are using the browser plugins or not. When people in your network share links with you, you will see a new message in your inbox, linked at the top right above the search box.


• How to add other user(s) to your network
  When you are on a user's page, under the search box at the top right, click "Add to Network"


• How to search for a user?
• Click on "Go to a user" option. You can find this option either under people's tab or on top right
• Type Username
• Press Enter


• Keep yourself updated
  You can keep yourself updated by checking Delicious hot list, which is displayed on the homepage. Here you will find the most "popular" and "recent" pages that users find interesting. This information will help you to keep updated with the latest trends.


• Research
  Delicious is an extremely helpful tool for researchers. If you are interested in some topic, you can keep track of all articles, blog posts etc. written on that topic on this site and gather lots of information on it.


• Subscribe to your favorite users & subjects
• Subscribe to the user
  To subscribe to the user. Go to the user's page and at the bottom, click on "RSS Feed for these Bookmarks". After subscribing you would be able to keep track of that person's bookmarks.
• Subscribe to the tag
  To subscribe to the tag, search for the topic you are interested in and then click on "See all bookmarks tagged" at the top left of the search results. On that page, you can again go down to the bottom and subscribe to any items with that particular tag.


• Collaboration
  Delicious allows user to create a group with shared account. It is useful in companies where employees can use one central point to share all exciting new information and useful articles on development within their industry.