Top 10 Social Bookmarking Sites
The number of social bookmarking sites has exploded in the last year, leaving someone new the space probably a bit overwhelmed at where to start. If you are new to social networking understand that each social networking site is different, it attracts a different audience with different interests. Thus what interests someone on Reddit might not appeal to anyone on Digg.
So who are the main players in the social bookmaking space? And what is the profile of the typical user of these social bookmarking sites? The answers below might surprise you!
Digg.com
Digg is the most popular and notable of the social bookmarking sites. Quantcast estimates that that Digg has about 25 million unique visitors a month. The audience is predominantly male (65%), between 25-34 years of age, with a household income between 30k and 100k. Digg’s demographics have changed as it has become more popular (mainstream). Not to long ago the Digg profile was male, under 25 who made less than 30k a year. Social media topics that do well on Digg include interesting photos, anything anti-Microsoft and lists (top 10, etc).
Propeller.com
Propeller (formely Netscape) is comfortable the second biggest social bookmarking site behind Digg with over 5.8 million monthly uniques, of which 3.6 million (62%) are in the U.S. Netscape also attracts a male biased audience (54) , that is slightly older (45-54 is biggest age group), and 55% of Propeller.com visitors have an household income over $60k.
StumbleUpon
Stumbleupon.com reports over 4.5 million members and Quantcast classifies it as a top 5,000 site that has about 1.5 million unique visitors a month from the U.S. The audience is male biased (56%) and between the ages of 45-54 (22% of visitors). The older demographic also skews the household income with 51% of visitors having a household income of over $60k.
Reddit.com
Reddit is becoming a very popular social bookmarking site with about 1.2 million unique visitors in the U.S., making it slightly larger than Del.icio.us. Reddit attracts a predominantly male (57%) audience that is between the ages of 35-44 (25%). With 65% of the audience having a household income of between $30 and $100k, Reddit is a mainstream social networking site. As a result, political, environmental, business and entertainment news does well with this audience.
Del.icio.us
Del.icio.us is the oldest social bookmarking site and Quantcast classifies it as a top 5,000 site that gets about 1.1 million unique visitors a month from the U.S. The audience is male (53%) and about 47% of them are over 45. Similar to StumbleUpon, 51% of visitors having a household income of over $60k.
Newsvine.com
Newsvine is a top 10,000 site that reaches over 362K U.S. monthly uniques. The site attracts a slightly male slanted audience (54%) and 51% of the users have a household income under $60k.
Fark.com
Fark.com is a much more trafficked site than people expect. With 1,972,698 monthly unique visitors in the U.S., it is bigger than StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us and Reddit. The Fark audience is heavily male (69%), between the ages of 25-34 and a household income under $60k (52%). The Fark audience likes interesting, bizarre and amusing news stories, along with regular photo manipulation contests.
Blinklist.com
Blinklist.com is a top 10,000 site that reaches over 353K U.S. monthly uniques. The site appeals to a more male group (59%) who are between the age of 25 and 54. About 54% of the audience earns over $60k a year.
Clipmarks.com
Clipmarks reaches over 205K U.S. monthly uniques. The site appeals to a male biased audience (58%) with a household income of $30-60k. The site attracts almost equal amounts of people between 25 and 54.
Shoutwire.com
This site reaches approximately 70,742 U.S. monthly uniques. The site appeals to a more male (60%), younger audience (38% are under 24).
So what does the demographic data tells us? One is that the typical social bookmarking site user is male, between the ages of 35-54 with a household income of $60k or more a year. Is this your target audience? If it is not, then these are probable not the main social networking sites that you should be focusing on.
Note that Digg attracts more users than all the other social bookmarking sites combined. Similar to how MySpace dominates the social networking space (and gets the lion share of advertising dollars), Digg is the dominate social bookmarking site. If you are trying to reach this audience, then you have to include Digg in your marketing efforts, simply because the audience is so large, relative to everyone else in this space.
Filed under Demographics, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (29) : Mar 5th, 2008

March 5th, 2008 at 5:59 am
Top 10 Social Bookmarking Sites…
[...] Courtesy of Social Media Optimization [...]…
March 5th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Exactly what I need! Thanks alot.
March 5th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
These are great sites but nowadays I don’t visit Digg and Reddit as often as before. Probably because most of the users are not really that helpful enough.
Now I’m kinda hooked on Sphinn and SU…I really find it interesting and fun.
March 6th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Thanks for the list. Currently stumbleupon brings me more traffic than any other social bookmarking sites.
March 6th, 2008 at 9:23 am
[...] Top 10 Social Bookmarking Sites [...]
March 6th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Great info…
March 6th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Great list. Thanks for the information. I still can’t figure out why Digg is the most popular as far as visits when Stumble Upon seems to be liked by so many more.
March 6th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
This is a good list and it’s really interesting to see the make up of each network. Not surprised to see StumbleUpon in third spot. I’m wondering if at some point we will see a mass exodus from Digg to StumbleUpon or another network ala MySpace -> Facebook. To me, StumbleUpon offers superior services to Digg and I sense others feel the same way (especially those new to social media). Only time will tell I suppose…
March 7th, 2008 at 12:27 am
Great recommendations. I agree with @James Duthie that Stumbleupon will eventually pass Digg: it’s much easier to use and is more friendly to the new social media people. To me, Digg started as a techy trap and still is for the most part. Plus, it seems Digg is changing the way you can become Popular. I do like and use Digg but if I had to recommend one or the other, the “ThumbsUp” Toolbar seals the deal. We shall see what the future brings.
March 7th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
[...] Hier eine freie Übersetzung des englischen Artikels ”Top 10 Social Bookmarking Sites” vom social media optimization Blog. Die Anzahl der social Bookmarking Seiten ist explodiert, wärend des letzten Jahres. Wer die neuen soziale Netzwerke verstehn möchte, muss wissen dass jede soziale Networking-Website anders ist und ein anderes Zielpublikum mit unterschiedlichen Interessen, anspricht. So sind die Interessen von Reddit Besuchern nicht die selben, wie von Personen, die Digg nutzen. [...]
March 8th, 2008 at 2:57 am
Thanks Buddy
Amazing List. Every day i use Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Del.icio.us, Propeller. Mostly i like to use Stumbleupon and Del.icio.us.
March 8th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
[...] Social Bookmarking im Überlick zumindet für die USA. (dt. Übersetzung) Wer macht mal eine Liste deutschsprachiger oder alternativer Anbieter und Projekte? [...]
March 9th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
[...] David Wilson van Socal Media Optimization heeft de top 10 Social Bookmarking sites op een rijtje gezet. [...]
March 11th, 2008 at 7:24 am
I would not have thought, that Clipmarks would be on this list.
March 12th, 2008 at 11:12 am
I doubt blinklist on the list of top ten bookmarks, its just that you’ll need to put first their widget in order to be functional…
March 13th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
[...] If you are into social bookmarking you will want to check out this list. Now I didn’t create the list but found it online and thought I would share. The Social Media Optimization blog has a post titled “Top 10 Social Bookmarking Sites“. The list gives you a short summary of each of of the websites. Might give you a start if you haven’t been involved in social bookmarking yet but want to start. [...]
March 20th, 2008 at 1:44 am
This is very interesting! I have enjoyed reading this very insightful post. Very engaging and informative. Thanks for sharing.
March 25th, 2008 at 1:54 am
I’ve been looking for social bookmarking sites. I had a bunch of them but I didn’t really know which site will I choose for bookmarking interested websites, not until I was able to read this article. Thanks a lot for the writer of this article. I hope you’ll add 10 more
April 5th, 2008 at 12:30 am
Digg is the best one…
April 5th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Good list. Shoutwire gets me a decent number of hits in fact.
May 5th, 2008 at 10:03 am
[...] 30: Top 10 Social Bookmarking Sites [...]
May 5th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
[...] 30: Top 10 Social Bookmarking Sites [...]
May 11th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
I love digg. I found a company who actually is hiring digg consultants to access their friend networks. Smart.
June 11th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
finally, i found the top list of social networking.
July 6th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
RatingOutOfTen.com ( http://www.roo10.com ) offers social bookmarking with the added ingredient of rating and profiling. This allows users to see who rated their bookmarks by demographic e.g. Did mainly boys or girls like it? Where were people that liked it distributed geographically. The site has only just gone public, and so is in the process of populating it’s database and growing it’s user base, but is open for visitors.
July 20th, 2008 at 9:45 am
You can find a directory for social bookmarking sites at http://social-bookmarking-sites.com .
The sites can be filtered by the use of do-follow and nofollow, too. This should be useful for webmasters.
July 21st, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Great list. The stats are very helpful in determining which Social Media websites carry the greatest importance. Though I plan on submitting to them all.
August 6th, 2008 at 4:42 am
Thanks for the list and a description of each. To be honest, I’ve heard of most, if not all, of these but didn’t necessarily know much about them except the biggies like Digg etc.
There’s an “art” to using them though isn’t there? It’d be great to see a write up of “best practices” for each. A lot to ask I know.
Cheers for the write up!
August 25th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Thanks for the article on Social Bookmarking! Very informative… and timely! Keep them coming.