It seems as though every day I discover new search engines, bookmarking tools other Web applications that are intended to simplify the cluttered and overwhelming task of conducting Internet research. But let’s face it, most of these resources sound great in theory, but prove less effective in practice. Yet once in awhile I come across a tool that is inviting, intuitive and actually does what its mission statement says it will. Diigo is this type of tool. 

The catchy, quintessentially Web 2.0 name reads like a word from some obscure foreign language, but is actually an acronym for “Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other Stuff.” Though many enter the world of Diigo in a social networking frame of mind, the networking aspect is the core of the tool and only scratches the surface of Diigo’s capabilities. For teachers, a useful feature is the “watchlist,” which enables you to know what’s going on across the network through specific tags, for example “education” tags. The social annotation feature is the best way to collect and share online information from anywhere, and you can write about that information with the blogging feature! The first characteristic I look for in any tool designed to enhance productivity is usability; will using this save me time and effort? Diigo passes the “usefulness test” with flying colors. Plus, it has all of the information that’s important to you and allows you to share it with others educators. Perhaps this is what the author of the blog I’m Not Actually a Geek meant when he said, “It has changed the scope of what it means to be social.”

The conversation map is a living, breathing representation of Social Media and will evolve as services and conversation channels emerge, fuse, and dissipate.

Conversations are taking place with or without you and this map will help you visualize the potential extent and pervasiveness of the online conversations that can impact and influence your business and brand.

But honestly, even with their latest release - they have stopped innovating. I checked out Diigo on the recommendation of Mike Fruchter sometime ago via FriendFeed. Since signing up I hadn’t really used it. But, the latest update to delicious broke my Daily Digest series - which was the final straw. And since Diigo allows you to import from Delicious, there really is no switching costs for me. That being said I have been extremely happy with my Diigo experience. Here are six reasons Diigo is better than Delicious

1. It’s more socialDiigo has an extra level of social networking that Delicious does not provide - at least not in a usable manner. You can connect with people that have similar interests based on what you tag. 2. AnnotationsThe annotations feature is very cool. When you bookmark something, you can highlight notable sections to refer to later. And any other Diigo users can see your highlights when they visit the page if they have the toolbar installed. 3. Superior UI and ExperienceAside from all the snazzy features, the core “bookmarks” interface is much better than that of delicious - offering many additional features and better organization. 4. MicrobloggingThe microblogging feature in delicious never got a chance. This is the “daily post” feature that basically posts a digest to your blog of all the bookmarks you have saved over X amount of time. Delicious always had it as an “experimental feature”, for 3 years. Diigo does it so much better, allowing you to post only specific tags to your blog as well as providing more customization features. 5. DiscoveryNow, this is something that delicious did fairly well but is pretty much a product of its large community. But Diigo does a great job at it too, allowing you discover what’s hot across the network but also within a group of friends. It also has a “watchlist” feature that allows you to keep tabs on certain tags in the network. And last, it shows you a river of bookmarks from your network - with a neat tag cloud to see what your community is tagging the most. 6. Better ToolboxYou can import, export. There are widgets, linkrolls, and tagrolls. They offer several ways to interact with the service - through context menu, toolbars, bookmarklets. There’s a Facebook app. You can “save elsewhere” too. So, if you still want to post stuff to delicious (let’s say you have a great community there), you can set that up. What this does is posts your new bookmarks to the other services whenever you post them to Diigo.

All in all Diigo wins hands down. So ditch delicious, sign up, and join me.

Diigo: Collaboration Beyond Bookmarks

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.

Diigo is one of the best tools a student could ever ask for. It helps a student alot because say for example the student is asked to do a research paper and needs the works cited, if he or she forgets to cite something and wants to go back to see where it was that they got the information from, all the student does is type the sentence and Diigo will automatically find the exact website that it is from. Unlike Google or Yahoo, Diigo takes you straight to the website and highlights the sentenced you have typed. Google and Yahoo give you millions of sites which include the same words, or many times just a few of those words and not in order. It is much harder and time consuming to use those sites to look for something. Diigo facilitates the work of people and it also saves you alot of time, which is a great advantage to students considering the fact that they sometimes have more than one assignment to complete.

Diigo: Use this tool to organize research material just like you would in a book or journal. Diigo lets you add highlights and sticky notes to any website.

As the genealogy community on Facebook develops, we are seeing many ways this platform can support us beyond the obvious socializing and networking features. One Facebook tool we can all use is the Diigo application. If you’re not familiar with Diigo, it’s an online bookmarking system that allows you to bookmark your favorite sites and pages with tags for quick retrieval, highlights to focus on the content you find useful, notes to add to the content and the ability to share with others. I’m just touching the surface of Diigo’s usefulness - as you’ll see in the further reading section below. The Diigo application on Facebook only displays bookmarks - yours and your Diigo friends. You will see the bookmark information including any notes or highlighted text associated with the bookmark by clicking the Expand link. Following any of the bookmark’s links will take you out of Facebook. If you click on one of a bookmark’s tags, it will take you to your bookmarks tagged with that tag at the Diigo site.

Diigo, pronounced Deego, is not just another social networking site. Diigo is a research tool and a means to keeping notes while searching the Internet. Founded in 2005, Diigo continues to mature as the premier internet-based research tool. For well over a decade, my bookmarks have been machine specific and usually destroyed and lost when I've changed machines. Sure, people have options to save, import, and export bookmarks but I've never wasted my time. My philosophy has been, "If I can't find it again then it wasn't that important." Silly, I know. Today, though, there is something compelling about the service Diigo that might change my Internet surfing behavior. Two years ago, Diigo was marketed as a research tool. This year, Diigo is marketed as a social bookmarking tool. I'm not really into social websites - except FriendFeed. The idea that everything must be shared is total nonsense. I do not share all of my bathroom visits and cannot bring myself to believe sharing my Internet surfing habits are any more valuable than the waste products being flushed down the pipes. Still - I was curious enough about Diigo to activate the account and try out highlighting, commenting, and writing this blog post. First, I added the Diigo toolbar to firefox. Click, done. Setting up the "Send to Blog" was just as easy. I simply added the URL, name, and password. Diigo did the rest.

Social bookmarking, networking, and collaboration in a convenient package. Rather than just bookmarking a page why not highlight it or leave sticky notes for you and others to find around the web? Why not find and follow other users with the same interests as you? By joining Diigo you have access to social bookmarking, collaboration, and interest based communities to increase your ability to find relevant information across the web.

We live in an age of information, through the internet we have access to tons of information. Searching, finding, processing, and creating value from the information that we find is aided with social media. By working together and using social bookmarking sites and communities you can access more information faster than if you were to just search the web yourself. Through increased access to information you can share information and strengthen the community. Diigo is one site that offers you access to the social we

Diigo provides a great platform to create social value. There are a wide range of groups and people from around the world accessing Diigo. The features of the site extend past Diigo.com and allow you to access information on individual pages throughout the internet. In a nutshell Diigo is a powerful social bookmarking tool that allows you to gain and give value to and from other users.

Diigo is going to change all that: you're given a wonderful little sidebar for your browser, you can create bookmark groups, tag things, etc., and do all the normal things that Delicious let you do. But the revolution is in the extra parts: post-it notes and highlighting capability for any web page anywhere. Unbelievable. It is rocking my world.

Diigo: Bookmarking Heaven