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HOW SOCIAL BOOKMARKING STARTED
The latest hot trend in everything to do with site promotion and internet marketing of business websites and blog sites these days seems to be all about social bookmarking. This new site promotion technique has actually been with us since 2003 when Del.icio.us started getting worldwide attention for developing a great way for web surfers to go the Del.icio.us “members” section they put all their personal bookmarks in so they could visit the certain sites that they loved no matter what their physical location was. Since all of your personal bookmarks were located on Del.icio.us, all you had to do was go on their site no matter what computer you happened to be at, and all your bookmarks were right there waiting for you.

A lot of online entrepreneurs took notice of what Del.icio.us was doing and used that business model to start their own social bookmarking services. Companies like Furl, StumbleUpon and Digg put their own individual spins on social bookmarking. These newer online websites share a number of common features. First, they allow individuals to create personal collections of bookmarks and easily share their bookmarks with others from one central hub. Another huge commonality all of these sites share is the fact that you can actually promote your own site or blog to everybody on these sites that are seeking out information that your business or blog site has that is linked to your main site contents or is embedded in your home page.

LET EVERYONE SEE YOUR BLOG!
When all of the general subscribers to these sites sign up, they request to see only specific categories of sites they have an interest in, so it is your job to make sure that if you have a site that promotes horror movies in some capacity, those people with an interest in horror sees your site first.

If your web site or blog pertains to horror comics, for instance, you would go to Del.ic.ous.com and sign up for their service which only takes a few minutes, and you can then make public any site or web page that you really want everybody else to see because you want to promote it for your own web traffic to increase or because you really like the site. You just use a good description of the site or page to make sure you generate the right visitors to the page, or you will not succeed

Nobody knows who first started using this technique to get a lot of self-promotion out of social bookmarking, but everybody is very happy that they figured it out, because if you use this as a site promotion tool in the correct manner, you will go far in reaching your required traffic site goal to put your company or blog in the black. Let’s go over the four main ways you can use social bookmarking to enhance your site traffic right away.

USE THE RIGHT TAGS IN THE PAGE DESCRIPTION AREA
Every one of these social bookmarking sites uses the same applications to generate who sees your pages that you are promoting, so you have to make sure the tags you put in the description are on these bookmarking sites to describe every different page you want to promote are appropriate to that specific page. A good example of a perfect tag for this article would be “social bookmarking”. Remember that tags are almost exactly like keywords, except that they can be longer than two words if you need to be more descriptive than that to get your viewers to your more specific type of blog or web site. Furthermore, multiple tags allow bookmarks to belong to more than one category, a limitation of the traditional hierarchically organized folders found in most Web browsers.

Make sure that if you have more than five tags in a description area of the social bookmarking site, that they are all relevant. You have to make sure that everybody that wants to see those types of articles won’t get turned off when they go a page you are promoting that you have tagged with the term “world history”, for example, and instead they get information regarding the latest Oakland Raiders trade in 2006. This will not benefit your site or the viewer’s interest, so avoid bad tag descriptions at all costs. Tags are also clickable, and when selected will result in a list of all bookmarks that share that tag. The ability to reorient the view by clicking on tags or user names, called pivot browsing, provides a lightweight mechanism to navigate the viewer’s direction to your site.

DON’T JUST PROMOTE YOUR OWN BLOG SITE
Most every subscriber to these social bookmarking sites are very web-savvy when it comes to finding out if a web site owner or blog writer are just trying to get more visitors to their sites using flagrant self-promotion tactics. They will be well aware that you are one of these charlatans if all you do is promote the same page time after time on every social bookmarking site out there, so you must bookmark other sites that you have an actual interest in.

Remember that everybody can see who is promoting every site out there by looking down at your user name in the description area of the bookmark link, so if you are a writer and your site is “sci-finews.bog.com”, then keep your bookmarking to that site down to no more than 3 submissions per week in each social bookmarking site to ensure nobody gets suspicious.

In addition to that, that make sure that every time you promote your own page or site, promote 2 others that you really enjoy to throw everybody off your self-promotion techniques. The reason you must actually like the sites you promote is the fact that when you write a decent description of the web log or site you are linking your bookmark to, you must generate an excitement about the site that does a good job of describing why a subscriber should go there. Otherwise, you have blown your cover!

GET IN A SET ROUTINE
Set up a specific routine for every new article or blog you write so you never forget these important etiquette rules. By systematically submitting these articles the same way every time you finish one, you will be used to the overall best way to get your blog or website promoted without drawing the ire of all of the tech geeks that these social bookmarking sites seem to attract like moths to a flame.

Internet marketing and site promotion is all about finding out what the latest techniques and cutting edge technology out there can do for you, and social bookmarking is just one of many. If you use these four essential social bookmarking promotion tools the correct way, you are one step closer to reaching your high traffic goals that you have always dreamed about.

Artist’s rendering of synthetic platelets that mimic, and outperform, natural platelets (Image: Peter Allen Illustration)

The skin is the body’s first line of defense against infection. And when this barrier is broken, or an internal organ is ruptured, it is the process of coagulation, or clotting, which relies largely on blood cells called platelets, that seals the breach and stems the flow of blood. Researchers at UC Santa Barbara (UCSB) have now synthesized nanoparticles that mimic the form and function of platelets, but can do more than just accelerate the body’s natural healing processes.

Platelets are nucleus-free blood cells that are essentially the building blocks for any blood clot, binding together at the edge of a wound as well as changing shape and secreting chemical messengers to call more platelets to the scene of the injury to assist in the healing process. However, coagulation can be hampered if an injury is too severe, or if the injured person is taking anti-coagulation medication or suffers from a platelet disorder.

In such cases, the platelet-like nanoparticles (PLNs) synthesized at UCSB could save the day. Developed by researchers in UCSB’s Department of Chemical Engineering and its Center for Bioengineering, the synthetic platelets behave just like their naturally-occurring counterparts, mimicking their shape, flexibility and surface biology.

In this way, their creators say they could be added to a patient’s own natural blood supply or augment the patient’s own platelet supply and accelerate the healing process for both internal and external injuries. Not only will the PLNs congregate at the site of an injury, but like natural platelets, they’ll also call other platelets to the site and bind to them. Then, once their task has been completed and the wound has been plugged, the PLNs will dissolve into the blood.

Furthermore, the researchers claim to have improved on nature, with their nanoscale synthetic platelets outperforming micron-sized natural ones in tests. The synthetic platelets are also able to be customized with medications that match the needs of patients with a specific condition. They could also be used to carry antibiotics to certain parts of the body, such as across the blood-brain barrier, to provide targeted therapy and improved diagnostics.

“This technology could address a plethora of clinical challenges,” said Dr. Scott Hammond, director of UCSB’s Translational Medicine Research Laboratories. “One of the biggest challenges in clinical medicine right now – which also costs a lot of money – is that we’re living longer and people are more likely to end up on blood thinners.” The researchers say PLNs would help in the treatment of such elderly patients, allowing the PLNs to be targeted at the site of an injury without triggering unwanted bleeding.

Importantly, the researchers say the synthetic platelets have a longer shelf life and are cheaper relatively speaking than another person’s platelets – both important factors at times of emergencies and natural disasters when blood products are in highest demand.

These aren’t the first synthetic platelets we’ve seen that improve on nature. In 2009, researchers at Case Western University reported the development of artificial platelets made of biodegradable polymersthat reduced clotting times in animal models and attracted the interest of the military.

The team will now look at how well the production of the PLNs scales up and asses practical clinical concerns, such as manufacturing, storage, sterility ahead of pre-clinical and clinical testing.

Results of the researchers’ current findings appear in the journal.

Source: UC Santa Barbara