Sites that feature free social networks and online bookmarking have grown in popularity in the last five years. But it’s hard to know which free social network is right for you if you haven’t tried all of them. This is why many Internet users find social network reviews valuable. When reading these reviews, though, you may find that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Many folks defend their choice of online social networking sites vehemently. That may be due, however, to being unaware of all the available options, so they got hooked on one site without really knowing what’s out there. Some of those who are insistent about their choice don’t even know the difference between business networking sites, social bookmarking sites or sites that offer online social networking just for fun. Many are not aware that there are also social networking sites, like Capazoo, that use micropayments to incentivize users to visit the site and promote it to others.

Many social media users aren’t aware of the variations between free social networks because there is a tremendous amount of overlap of features on the various sites. Sites such as Facebook can be used just for fun or for serious business networking, or both! There are thousands upon thousands of user-driven free Ning online social networking communities, such as New Energy Network, which specialize in focused interests. These type of online social networking sites are significant because they’re created by users and focus on distinct interests. Interests can be as specific as book aficionados, who now have many online communities geared just to them. Online social networks like LibraryThing have everything from chats, book reviews and online bookshelves. An innovative variant of online networking sites is social bookmarking, because it opens up new worlds of information storage and retrieval. Sites that feature social bookmarking, such as Reddit, allow logged-in users to save their online bookmarks for free. These sites are also powerful for people who are searching for information, because searches are greatly enhanced by keyword tagging. The ability to use keyword tagging also is of value to Web marketers, who use them to garner backlinks for their blog posts and Web sites. A single social bookmark link doesn’t carry a lot of weight but in aggregate, they matter. Also, like with Digg, if a blog post is entered on one of these sites, it can often achieve high search engine rankings if the keywords were researched and the listing was entered correctly.

Blurring the line even further are sites like Mixx, which feature both online social networking and bookmarking. They are quite useful for bookmarking URLs but they also provide a tremendous platform for online social networking and marketing. You can make a lot of friends on these sites and links posted to these online social networking platforms sometimes rank well in the search engines. Tremendous benefits such as these are the reason people who make their livings online love online social media sites.