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Although it pains me to say it, I think there is something better than Delicious out there. I first came across Diigo in the summer and have been playing with it on and off ever since.  Social bookmarking has been an absolute godsend to education and Delicious was at the forefront of that - but, in my view, it’s been surpassed. I had high hopes of the latest version when it was released at the end of July, but, to be honest, they just focused on the instructional design and look-and-feel rather than functionality.  You still can’t create groups or lists, or send messages to the people in your network, and you can’t annotate either.  All of which can be accomplished in Diigo and more

Diigo groups are ideal for team research If you have any need for team-based research, Diigo groups are ideal for you. A Diigo group can be public, private or semi-private. Pool and organize resources using group bookmarks When a member of a Diigo group comes across a web page, he can highlight, tag, and share it to the group. In this way, group bookmarks become a repository of collective research. group members can also vote up bookmarks so important information stays on the top. group sticky notes are great for discussion When adding sticky notes, you can make them private, public, or viewable only by members of a certain group. With group sticky notes, group members can interact and discuss important points right on the web page, preserving the original context. group tag dictionary to enforce tagging consistency The group administrator can define a set of recommended tags for the group to help enforce tagging consistency. Diigo has recently launched an education version, where you can create class accounts and add privacy settings, so I recommend you have a look at this. Oh, and for those of you who can’t quite leave Delicious behind just yet, you can synch the two so that whatever you save in Diigo gets automatically put into your Delicious account as well.

a lot of thought into the design to make it easy for beginner users to get started while satisfying power users’ needs

Diigo 3.85 (A/A-)Diigo is by far the most fully featured social bookmarking site in this list, and offers several unique capabilities. The most notable feature is that users can highlight text right on the page, as well as make annotations via a “sticky note” for later viewing.There are also other very useful features. I particularly liked the sophisticated and advanced search option for doing a keyword search of one’s own or public bookmarks. On that page you can limit a search by a phrase, and restrict a search to a URL, title, comments or highlights. You can even search “on” specific users as wellNote that when you place a “sticky note” to comment on a page for your later viewing, that note is viewable by anyone else in the Diigo community that views that page too! .There are some other interesting and unique features on Diigo. For instance, when highlighting a word on any page with Diigo’s bookmarking tool, a drop down menu automatically appears that allows users to search for that highlighted word on various search engines, social bookmarking sites; blogs, on the active site and more. I also had much more control in formatting when saving a page; and had an option to forward the page to another person as well.What about the all important group feature? Well, Diigo rounds out its offerings very nicely by just this month launching its “groups” function. That feature looks to be a clear and elegant way to allow anyone to set up a private environment for sharing your bookmarks. Ultimately, if you combine the Web annotation capabilities with the ability to share in groups, Diigo has created a very enterprise friendly social bookmarking service. And, according to a spokesperson at the firm, this groups function is “just the first of many more advanced group collaboration functions that we will be introducing in several phases” So we look forward to staying tuned!My Grades:group Function Capability: AResearch Value: A-Design/Interface/Ease of Use: A-Fully Featured: A-(only missing “related users” and “larger topics”)

the ability to create your own customized group where you could share your bookmarks within a own defined group—such as a workforce team, department, project team, or any other defined group. That article provided a list of social bookmarking firms that fit that criteria, and included a detailed feature comparison chart

the four most important criteria for a social bookmarking sites’ applicability to internal/enterprise searching:1. Group function capability. How easy is it to create a new Group? Can the Group remain private? Other Group features?2. Research value. How much of a page can be saved; are there advanced and precision search features?3. Design/Interface/Ease of Use. Is it a pleasant experience to view and use the site? Does it show evidence of being intelligently thought out and designed?4. Fully Featured. In the Knowledge Management supplement, I focused on these features:Ability to create an RSS FeedSurfacing of “related tags”Surfacing of “related users”Tag suggestionsTag cloudImport/export bookmarksAbility to crate larger “topics” or hierarchical categories

Building a Grassroots Research Directory As part of my tag housekeeping chores, it dawned on me that the new groups feature in Diigo can be put to good use in developing a genealogy research directory.  I've created two groups FL Genealogy Resources and GA Genealogy Resources and I've been adding links I've already collected to them. 

This example shows the Florida group page.  Using the tag "cloud" on the right, you can select the topic that most interests you to see the links available.  The size of the font quickly tells you which tags have the most links.  Yes, this is a pretty basic directory at this point, but as more people join this group and add their own links it will increase in value - a grassroots effort.  My first group experiments are set up for state resources.  Florida and Georgia are my biggest research areas and I'm a native Floridian so I've got the skinny on resources in my area. I don't have to suggest a link be added and then hope someone posts it, I just do it myself.  In the process, I'm adding value for all researchers.  Tagging sites like Diigo give us the opportunity to share our knowledge with those we know - and those we don't.  With little effort on our part, we can build a valuable research network letting everyone participate and benefit from the results.

An innovative powerful feature: It allows a group manager to pre-define a set of groups tags as "recommended group tags" to improve group tagging consistency, or as a form of scaffolding to provide models of tags. These "recommended group tags" will automatically show up each time this group is selected in the bookmarking window:

Many possible use scenarios. For example, perfect for teachers to guide students for a more structured group bookmarking activities. Note: special credit to Steve Hargadon of Classroom2.0 for making this feature request!

The feature they are testing out applies to their groups feature.  Now, if you are a member of a particular group in Diigo, you can give certain URLs a thumbs-up if you think it is especially helpful.  They are holding off on deploying this feature site-wide until they can make a determination how game-able the feature is.

Groups are similar to a web forum, but centered more around site bookmarks that are collected to provide a resource for the Group.  There are Groups for all sorts of things, from social media to cooking.  Some Groups are extremely active, and others are simple collection points for related URLs.

Diigo is a social bookmarking site that is really giving the current champion, del.icio.us, a run for its money. It does everything that del.icio.us does (including simul-posting to your current del.icio.us account!) and so much more. From highlighting on a page, to adding sticky notes, to sharing bookmarks with groups, it really turns websurfing from a passive experience to a highly active one. Jennifer Dorman created the DEN group in Diigo a little over a week ago and there’s already over 50 members!

I’ve been loving Diigo since I ditched Delicious a few months ago. They are constantly adding awesome features and today I stumbled on the groups feature. Basically it allows you to create a group of like-minded users (it can be public or private) to share links, comments and it has a forum baked right in.

This is HUGE… It allows you to create micro communities and adds much greater value to “social” bookmarking. You can be a part of multiple groups - which are often topical in nature. There are all kinds of different options that allow you to discuss bookmarks in comment threads and in a forum. There are RSS feeds for each group - so you don’t even have to join one to get some benefit. And there’s a great “slideshow” feature that will allow you to quickly lopp through the bookmarked sites.