Diigo, known for its social annotation, finally went public yesterday. The service aims to turn the web writable allowing users to privately or publicly annotate any website they visit, in turn making a “participatory and interactive media” for its users. I must say that even though I have had an account for Diigo’s private beta since I last reviewed it late December, I have been anticipating its launch. So much has changed since my last review including social bookmarking enhancements, new annotation tools, tools built for bloggers, and more.
It’s only been one day since the public launch and I have already seen mixed comments about the service ranging from extremely happy to down right brutal, but both sides with some strong points. My say? I think it’s a great service because once you start using it, you will realize that it is much more then just bookmarking. Diigo has features that can please just about anyone. You can bookmark a site, take notes, save snippets of text and graphics, highlight sentences on a site, and even share notes on a site with others. If you are a writer, Diigo will allow you to keep your notes and highlights organized and allow you to write a blog post and publish it, all within the service. Diigo also makes it easier for users to bookmark and annotate by providing them with a browser extension (Firefox, Flock, and IE), or if you prefer, a bookmarklet (Diigolet) so you do not have to install anything. The hard part though is standing out as the unique and powerful service that Diigo is and not appearing like it’s just another Del.icio.us clone.
To further illustrate my point of Diigo being more than just bookmarking, let me give you an example scenario. Currently, I’m working on making an online store for my company and I’m beginning to research shipping and handling for our products. I searched around the web and found an article with helpful information so I bookmarked it with Diigo. Being that I bookmarked it, I was then able to highlight the strong points of the article and add notes to the areas that I wanted to add input to. Now, the next time I visit the site, all my notes and highlights will appear (
assuming I have the Diigo toolbar enabled
). But lets take this a step further. I’m not saving these notes just for myself. I made the notes to share with my partners and that is just what Diigo allows me to do. I locate my bookmark in Diigo and forward the bookmark to my friend which provides them with my notes in the email along with a link to the article I annotated. Now, this link that they receive in the email is special because it allows them to view all my highlighted text and notes on the page without being a Diigo user. Even more so, if they do have an account with Diigo, they can add notes in reply to my notes and highlight text themselves on the article! Now that’s teamwork ;-).
I have decided that because Diigo has such a wide range of features and, from what I can tell, most people feel it is simply a bookmarking service, the best way to describe Diigo is by showing how it differentiates from the crop. So, I am going to go over the main features of Diigo one by one to show what exactly Diigo is capable of. Be sure to also check out the Demo Tours and Features Overview at Diigo’s website.
IE7 And Toolbar - 14 views
Time for localization and other suggestions - 159 views
started by Jose Luis Pajares on 23 Mar 08
29 follow-ups, last by Graham Perrin on 25 Mar 10
yc c and Thomas Laigle liked it
New toolbars updated for everyone - 44 views
New toolbar function: Quick Access Filter - 1776 views
Diigo toolbar causing Firefox crash - 94 views
hide other people's annotations - 91 views
How do we deal with spammers? - 98 views
started by The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy on 13 Mar 09
26 follow-ups, last by The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy on 31 Dec 11
Sticky notes can not be edited - 236 views
Using Diigo without a toolbar - 91 views
highlight the wrong text - 86 views
Cramming way too much, repetitively, into the lower part of Diigo Meta - 33 views
started by Graham Perrin on 04 Oct 09
4 follow-ups, last by Graham Perrin on 11 Oct 09
Graham Perrin liked it
8More
Diigo Launches - More Than Just Bookmarking - 2 views
Changes not updated to other services - 28 views
How to turn off "Clip It!"? - 30 views
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