Tagging and bookmarking tools for nonprofits

If you're ready to start playing with social bookmarking and tagging yourself, you could start with the Big Three: del.icio.us, Technorati and Flickr.

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking service, and was the very first site to use tagging. It's easy to set up a del.icio.us account, and if you add a del.icio.us button to your browser's toolbar you'll find it just as easy to save bookmarks to del.icio.us as it is to store them on your own computer (but a lot more useful). del.icio.us has gotten a bit slicker since it was acquired by Yahoo!, and it still has a mind-boggling assortment of tools that let you extend its functionality, but some people still find the interface a little too minimalist. If you'd like something spiffier you might want to check out Furl, BlinkList or ma.gnolia.

Technorati is a search engine for blogs. You can use Technorati to search millions of blogs and blog posts, and you can track specific Technorati tags -- like advocacy -- to find out what people are saying about that subject.  

Flickr is a tool for storing and sharing photos online (also now owned by Yahoo!) Flickr is a great way to organize photos you're collecting within your organization, and to get your members and supporters to contribute pictures too. (The photos on the main page of NetSquared come from Flickr.) Flickr uses tags to organize and find photos related to particular topics.