Microsoft Corp. is delving into social bookmarking with the release in early September of the first version of a new bookmarking tool focused on its technical audience, the company said yesterday.
Microsoft, which released a preview version of its social bookmarking application in May, is adding new features to the first version, such as the ability to subscribe to bookmarking tags via RSS and to import bookmarks from other bookmarking sites like Delicious.
Microsoft is focusing its application on its sites that provide forums and support for developers and designers. Since releasing a preview version of the application for new MSDN, TechNet and Expression sites, thousands of users in IT have begun using the application to “save their Web favorites online, share them with others, see what other technical pros are favoriting and connecting with others,” noted Microsoft’s John Martin in a blog post. Martin is the lead evangelist for server and tools online at Microsoft.
In the early September release, Microsoft will add:
The ability to subscribe to tags or people: Users can follow a tag or a fellow bookmarker through an RSS feed subscription Search to find people by their user name and other criteria Import tools: The new application will provide a tool to allow users to import their favorite bookmarks from Microsoft Internet Explorer and Delicious.
A bookmarking widget: Users who have their own blog or Web site can post the bookmarking widget to make it easy for other users to bookmark the blog or personal Web site directly to their social bookmarks on MSDN, TechNet and Expression. Those who have posted the widget will then get traffic on their sites when a bookmarked page is published in the social feeds on Microsoft’s global site, Martin said.
The first version of the application will be available in Chinese, Czech, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.