"social bookmarking" news and stories

The social web continues to explode, and HerFabLife is one of the latest entrants into the arena (not to be confused with "Herbalife," which is what I read thr first time I looked at it).

Though the site is still in "beta" (does a site ever get out of "beta?"), you can register and poke around this "bookmarking community" targetted at "young urban hip and trendy women." It seems that the highlight of the site is fashion and style, but there is a section that's meant for us young, urban hip and trendy Slashfoodies. Users can submit information about the latest restaurant opening, share with other users on the site, make comments, and discover hotspots from other submissions. It's a little sparse right now, with only a handful of restaurants listed for Los Angeles, but then again, they are still in beta.

In the past, we've posted about several social bookmarking and networking sites that focus on food, such as FoodCandy and Cork'd. Today Slashfood received a heads up about thisjustbrewed.com, a Digg-like site that describes itself as "social news for social beverages." True to its description, thisjustbrewed is a place where users can submit and vote for various news stories or sites that pertain to social beverages like coffee, tea, wine or beer. Scanning the site this evening, recent posts included a story about a type of bio-diesel fuel derived from beer by-products, news of $11,000 coffee machines, and a link to Bottletalk, another site where users can trade their own wine reviews. Most of the posts on thisjustbrewed are only getting a few votes each and none look to be more than a month old, so perhaps the site is still a bit new. With any luck, it will take on more users (I just joined), and become another good source for beverage-related news on the web.

[Thanks Ken]

We've mentioned the new Netscape here on Slashfood before. In case you haven't heard, what used to be an alternative web browser to Internet Explorer, netscape.com, got an extreme makeover in mid-June and has become a social bookmarking site, similar to del.icio.us, digg (technology) or flickr (photos), but for news. In case you're not familiar with social bookmarking, it is the concept of users collecting bookmarks of their favorite websites, and sharing them with the community. Users can collect, categorize, and "tag" bookmarks, which makes it easier for other users to find similar bookmarks. On sites like digg and newsvine, users can "vote" on each others' stories.

Over on Netscape, it's mostly about news, but users can also submit stories in a number of "channels," or categories - from Art & Design to Careers & Jobs to Health & Fitness to Popular Videos. It goes without saying that Slashfood's favorite channel is Food & Travel, but we'll get into more detail about that shortly.

Source