social bookmarking

I use Diigo on a daily basis to record all my Web bookmarks. Diigo is useful for two reasons, it provides some great tools for discovering things you or others have found useful, and it gives you access to all your bookmarks no matter what computer you maybe using. Creating a Diigo account is free and bookmarks can be imported or added to your profile using a browser extension or bookmarklet. Personally I like the bookmarklet because it works really well and does not require the installation of any extra software.

Rather than just being a place to store links, Diigo is pushing the boundaries of collaborative bookmarking a lot further than del.icio.us, the dominant player in online bookmarking. Diigo have recently updated their service to version 3.0 and it has a host of features which improve your ability to perform collaborative Web research. The most noticeable thing about the 3.0 update is the emphasis on social networking. Social networking improves your ability to share and locate interesting things through the use of friends and interest groups.

My profile on Diigo (click to view)

Lists is a new feature that enables a set of bookmarks to be assembled in order to explain an idea. It is then possible to share this list with your friends or the world at large via a nice looking Powerpoint-style online presentation. If you are interested in what the end result looks like go ahead and check out one I put together earlier. Whilst a niche piece of functionality Lists are useful when it comes to online research. Instead of emailing a boring list of links to someone you can have them view a choreographed slideshow with practically zero effort.

Creating a List in Diigo (click to enlarge)

Lastly Diigo have beefed up their user profiles so that you can include more information about yourself and control who can see it. This works a little like any social networking site like Facebook or LinkedIn. Again the majority of people probably won't utilise this feature, but if you are interested in letting friends or random strangers know more about yourself it is a very handy thing to have. The only complaint here (and it is not specific to Diigo) is that all these social networking style are expecting you to re-enter all your data every time. It would be nice to be able to import/export your social networking profile from the different sites.

Diigo is a social bookmarking/research tool that is very similar to del.icio.us but in my opinion has the edge in terms of features, usability and aesthetics. They have just released version 2 of their look and feel and it is really nice. One of the best enhancements is in the Diigolet bookmarklet, one of the tools you can use to bookmark and forward sites to others. Unlike most bookmarklets which are fairly plain the Diigolet actually looks and functions almost as good as the dedicated Firefox extension whilst at the same time working on a range of different Internet browsers. Checkout the video below to see what I mean...