Collaboration is one of the tenets of today’s web experience. The desire to share information, opinions and emotions adds tremendously to our online experiences. Social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us have been a great way to discover information on the web. But sharing bookmarks in this fashion has limited the level of collaboration we could get to. Diigo, a site that combines social annotation with bookmarking, enhances collaboration in a few interesting ways.
Highlighting the Important Stuff
Typically I bookmark a page because there’s something on it that’s important to me. With traditional bookmarking I would have to surf the page to find the nugget I want. Diigo allows you to highlight the sections you want to focus on. Additionally, you can add “inline sticky notes” to highlighted sections in order to capture your thoughts right on the page.
Sharing with Others
Annotating pages is great for an individual wanting to keep track of important parts of the page. But the real value of Diigo is when you share your bookmarks and annotations with others. Not only can they see the page with your annotations, they can add to it if you choose to let them. And you can annotate theirs. In fact, you can set up groups that allow many people to create real conversations from information found on the web.
Sharing Beyond the Page
Creating conversations right on the page is great, but it’s nice to send the conversation around the web as well. Diigo lets you easily email links and annotations to people you think would be interested in it. Also, you can create a blog entry from it, or even send it as a tweet in Twitter. This is powerful as you’re able to extend the reach of the conversation and open it up for further collaboration.
Diigo is packed full of functionality, and may take a bit to get used to. But if you’re looking to go beyond traditional bookmarking, you’ll want to check it out.
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