I Dig (not Digg) Diigo (not Digg-o)

I think I finally found the Web 2.0 social tool I love. It has captured my heart. It's put a spring in my cerebral step. Its made my life easier because it is sooooo easy to use and so many people who I've invited to this particular dance have come. This is a dance that has a bit of hip hop, a little paso doble, a bit of the ballroom and some jazz. This is easily the best social bookmarking and research tool that I've run across on the web and given that I'm in a geeked out frenzy most of the time trying out zillions of tools that's saying something big time. Most of them are tried, not bought if they cost, and discarded within about 2 days which is my ADD-tested and approved patience limit. For example, I figured out in a more fevered state that I've tried 13 Twitter clients already - settled on 2 - OutTwit and Tweetdeck.

That would be Diigo. Spelling D-i-i-g-o. Two eyes? Two 'i's"? Whatever. Spell it right and then go get it.

Diigo is one of the few Web 2.0 tools that I find both useful and utterly cool. It actually has value and purpose, because it best represents social bookmarking - which has value and purpose. Lots of it to someone who lives on research -feasts on knowledge and spits out judgments which may be questionable at times (many times) but at least are raising information-soaked questions, not judgments devoid of content.

Let me show you my Diigo dashboard first. (not a friggin' WORD about that picture. Understand?)

This should give you a good idea of how the whole thing works. You can create "groups" which are communities of interest really; you can communicate with individuals by sharing bookmarks to data. On the dashboard you can see the bookmarks you taggeds, the lists you've created to organize the bookmarks, the tags you've created to reflect the bookmarks to the community at large and find like bookmarks, the sites that you focus on and, of course, the groups I just mentioned this is coupled with a very cool toolbar that makes it easy to capture a bookmark. See the next Figure (Click)\

What makes this remarkable is that I can not only save web content that has research value to me in an organized way that's easily accessible but I can share that content as I pleasure and receive bookmarks from others who participate with me as my friends or as members of an open or restricted community also. So it gives me the ability to get what I need while I write CRM at the Speed of Light to make a ubiquitous example even more so, and then to solicit the links from someone who is supporting the effort. Wow. MAJOR MAJOR benefit.

Try it out. Use it. Join a group. Create a group. You want to understand social bookmarking as capabilities for engagement and community? This is the one you need to know. No other one comes as close. Period. And I've looked.

Technorati : Diigo, Social Bookmarking

Comments

[Davi Lucena]

I left Blinklist one month ago and start using Diigo.
But there are some details in the social bookmark tool that make it worst than the others, just like these:

- Diigo doesn't permit you give stars to the sites you most like, so they can appear in first place in a given list. Blinklist does it very well. Starring your sites is a good and esay way to have access to your "favorites of favorites".

- Diigo doesn't have a Quick Start Page, like Blinklist does. This page is something like iGoogle and Netvibes, where you can put all the sites you visit often.

- Diigo doesn't permit you organize your bookmarks in bundles, like Delicious does. The bundles are excellent to find the tags associated with any given issue.

- Diigo doesn't have a bookmarklet that permit you save a page in a quick way, just with a touch in the icon, without giving it an specified tag.

That is it. I hope Diigo become, in the future, a complete bookmarking tool, offering us all the facilities the others already have.

[Kim Kobza]

I absolutely have to agree Paul. I am still figuring out the best ways to use it. Bookmarks are effectively an indexing system for the web. The ability to share the index, and the content with groups with a high degree of relevance is a real time saver and very useful. It is probably a better tool for closed than open networks - but even the ability to find others who are interested in the same content is interesting - especially in smaller targeted communities.

I am less certain that it is purely speaking a social networking tool. But it is absolutely a wonderful and useful tool for supporting in-network communication around content. And I think that you said it well, very interesting. Interesting as well that it is provided in an advertising model. I would love to see it offered in an alternative model which is where I think that ultimately it may find its way into almost every meaningful network.

It provides so many efficiencies. The other thing is that they are just starting, so you know that it will get better as they reach into their community. This is one worth sharing for sure. They deserve kudos for the unique insights and innovation.

[Maggie Tsai]

Paul,

Thanks for a cool review of Diigo! Really dig your writing :-)

Indeed Diigo is designed with productivity & collaboration in mind. Glad to hear you found Diigo useful. Welcome to the Diigo community and look forward to your active participation!

Cheers,

Maggie
www.diigo.com

[Zoli Erdos]

I've recently switched from del.icio.us to Diigo. One huge benefit of caching all the backmarked web content is you have unlimited text search, on the full content, vs. just titles in del.icio.us.

And you don't really have to give up del.icio.us either: Diigo will import your bookmarks, and for new entries will del.icio.us in sync with itself.