Dude: What's is "Craftig"?

It's all about social media people - what is social media? Well, I'd be better suited to send you here. "Here" is a link to Wikipedia regarding social media. There. Now there are two links to Wikipedia's page on social media.

In short - "social media" is media shared through online social interaction.

In this case "media" - is really *anything* - photos, videos, articles, blog posts, Instructables, tutorials - some graphical/video element and/or content (words) that someone finds interesting enough to make available.

How does one "socially interact" while online? Well, while it's not sitting down with your friends at a bar, or over your latest knitting project - it's how you interact with others and share media (read: information) online.

Oldest Older form of social media: email. Think about it. You want to share something, you email it to your pal thereby "socially interacting" with them via the Interwebs.

Why is social media important? That, my dear friends - is another story entirely (maybe I'll write it: Social Media for Crafty Types). Regardless, here are examples of "social media" venues/sites/vehicles: Twitter, Digg, Delicious, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Ravelry, and ...

Digg, Delicious and Craftig (which I think stands for Craft Is Good) are social bookmarking sites. Using a social bookmarking site serves (in short) two basic purposes: (1) You, the user, get a place where you can access all your saved bookmarks, and (2) You're essentially sharing the media, be it a blogpost or whatever, with other users of that social bookmarking site.

(Sidebar: One of the benefits of social bookmarking to a blogger or other publisher is that when your content receives a large number of votes you get a link to your content propelled to the top of the "popular" list and thereby often get oodles and oodles of visitors to your site. )

Make any sense? This has taken me ages to get my little brain around - so if these are new words, or if you're not a "Net Head", or if you are old enough to own Madonna on cassette tape - give yourself a break. This is to kids today, what email was to us. Or, fax machines to our parents. It's a relatively new concept. Breath. Move on.

Now - There are TONS of other social media and social bookmarking sites out there - many are specialized around  a specific topic or geared toward a specific audience.

Enter Craftig - social bookmarking for we crafty types.

Now, let me add this. Craftig is new....apparently based on the limited amount of content - VERY new. And, I'm already seeing some performance degredation - so if they intend to take of they need to address that...and a few other bugaboos that I'd point out to their web peeps if they're interested. All very normal for a new site. But, Craftig is a great idea. Imagine all the crafty goodness you find out there every day on the Interwebs. You could bookmark on your computer - but what about when you get rid of that, or wipe your hard drive or are at work? Hello, you need anywhere access to your crafty linky bookmarky goodness.

So, you submit a link to Craftig - they publish it and irrespective of whether or not people vote on it ... if you view your own submitted content you can always gain access to your own personal links.

Suggestions to Craftig: I should be able to organize my own submitted links. For example, I want to organize my own submitted links into categories like "Quilting" "Sewing" "Knitting".