Diigo, which stands for “Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff”, is a social bookmarking site that allows users to highlight multiple content areas, including pictures, tag the page, and bookmark it. Users can also add sticky notes to a highlighted text area. It has other good features as well - see the flash demo for a good overview.
Many of the bookmarking sites are starting to blur together for me. I like Diigo and the founders are politely efficient in getting the word out. The company has also executed well and released a polished product. But at the end of the day I’m not sure how many social bookmarking sites can make the cut.
I will say this, though. I like the idea of public and private “sticky” notes on a website (Activeweave promises this, and I saw a really great demo two months ago, but it hasn’t launched yet). And I also like the ability to highlight multiple areas of a website in my bookmarks (Kaboodle does a great job of this).
But, as you can see, for just about every feature, there are multiple companies already attacking the space with vigor. Good luck to all. It’s going to be a long, hard fight. With perhaps as much as a $30 million payout at the end of the day.
I bet that’s supposed to be two people holding hands in the logo, but my brain says it’s a smiling walrus.
I see no innovation with this. Beta tag, an ugly minimalist design, an even uglier logo, and all the typical cliche 2.0 stuff. Although I’m probably being offensive, it just looks like someone trying to cash in on “Bubble 2.0″.
I would be willing to bet the site itself looks identical to delicious (which I consider second only to craigslist in terms of ugly and poor information design).
Greg, Thanks a lot - now I can only see the walrus in the logo, too.
Mike, Kaboodle seems more like a shopping / list builder. Does it allow highlighting on a webpage? I do not seem to see that feature. Thanks.
I have to agree with the guy above that said most companies are becoming clones . Thus I enjoy techcrunch alot and read it every morning I some how feel a sense of deja-vu , with most companies being profiled in recent weeks offering the same services/products etc as the ones featured the day before.
Not sure if its just because of what “new” startups are outthere or because its what the author is aware of.
an example is the “tagging” sites reviewed of late which all over the same thing. or reviewing a company 2-3 times when its in pre-beta, beta and launch stages.
Micheal its your blog and all just thought id give you my gold nugget.
micheal - I know, I know. A lot of people want to know about stuff pre-beta, so I write about it then. But I also like to do full profiles/reviews, so I post a second time around as well.
Mike, Just off airplane, saw your coverage here, thanks a lot. (just sent you a separat email)
I would like to offer some clarifications and comments on the comments above.
I think the thing that differentiates Diigo’s social annotation from exisiting social bookmarking services is that highlights, comments and interactions happen right on the page, in situ. So think of a giant transparency overlaying on top of all the web pages. You can write on the transparency as you wish, as private notes or public comments. And you can read public comments on the transparency left by other readers of the same page, and hear their “two cents” and interact with them.
Personally, I think this makes Diigo not only a more useful personal tool, but also a more powerful social tool that enable more fruitful interactions and connections among information consumers.
Several commenters above seem to fail to notice that Diigo is currently the only one out offering social annotation, in situ. If this is not innovation, I do not know what counts as innovation.
Diigo includes bookmarking and tagging features as a necessary component, since without it, it would be difficult to track things. Plus, Diigo allows advanced search of full-text pages, tags, notes, highlights, and titles, (I have been waiting for this feature on delicious for a long time)
Wade Ren
CEO, Diigo
Micheal Thats Cool. I have no idea where you get all your information on new startups from but im always finding new things out on this site. Thanks for the hard work and keep.
Happy christmas and a happy new year mate.
With Yahoo having purchased del.icio.us I can see quite easily the ‘notes’ side of things taken in fairly quickly by del.icio.us users. Tagging paragraph’s of a site just like they tag the full links of a site with common shared tags. There would also be no need to setup a separate tag system as a tag may only represent a paragraph internally within a URL. I don’t care if the tag at del.icio.us is to a URL or if it is to a section of information nested deep on page 64 of a URL. After viewing the demo of the site it looks all good just it is 200,000 or so users short of the collective knowledge that is already at del.icio.us.
I also like the fact that when I tag something at del.icio.us I get a list of suggested tags. The social networking needs to share the thoughts of others. The amount of times I import links into del.icio.us and think ‘Why didn’t I add that tag originally?’ is invaluable and is the strength of why del.icio.us is so good.
“So think of a giant transparency overlaying on top of all the web pages. You can write on the transparency as you wish, as private notes or public comments. And you can read public comments on the transparency left by other readers of the same page, and hear their “two cents” and interact with them.”
I’ve been using Diigo for about a week now. I can’t find those features. I’m having a hard time trying to give Diigo a fair shake, because I have about a bazillion Delicious bookmarks. As do many others. So there’s a considerable network effect here. But I like the idea of overlaid comments (though I think Hoodwink’d does it better).
James,
If you have the Diigo toolbar installed, all you have to do to highlight is to select some body of text, and click Diigo on the toolbar. Then you can click the highlighted text to add sticky notes
Anyone who can give me a Diigo invitation? Many thanks? email:doubleaf#gmail.com
Wade, thank you, I now understand how to get more out of the tool.
Now if the Firefox extension was just less buggy …
James,
Would love to hear about your bugs. We can discuss it here. http://groups.google.com/group.....ion?lnk=li
Can somebody send me Diigo invitation???
yoyurec(at)gmail.com. Tnxxxxxxx!!!
thoughts after seeing Flash tutorial of Diigo
There are certain additionl things diigo can add to their feature list.
They could have contact list inside their tool bar. Hence as soon as you compose some page with your personal notes on it, you can drag & drop page to people in your contact list. Sharing can also be done to some group list in your contact list.
http://mandvo.blogspot.com/200.....gocom.html
Please, can you send me invitation ?
fox_jgrddj@trashmail.net
Thanks
Would it be possible for me to get a Diigo invite? Please? I’d like to check it out!
Thanks,
morwyn11atgmaildotcom
hey,
i would greatly appreciate a diigo invite if possible. Thanks. My email is: chicken_chrissy@hotmail.com
The ability to tag things INSTANTANEOUSLY–no waiting for an interface to load, no waiting for the original page to reload after you tag–is enough to make me use it! Note that you can easily have it duplicate every new bookmark in delicious, so you’re still participating in that community at the same time!
One more BIG–but not at first apparent–advantage is that you can type a set of tags in t e search bar, and then every time you hit “QuickD” you create a bookmark with those tags. I find generally I’m researching something in particular, thus opening a lot of sites on the same topic, and when i want to tag something it’s w/the same tag as the last site, and the siee before that, and the site before that…So I’m not only having to wait for a tagging interface to load for all these sites, but also not having to remember exactly which tags I’ve been using for consistency (not to mention not having to retype them for every page!)…
Even without the highlighting/forwarding/searching advantages, I’d use Diigo for these reasons!
[written on mobile]
Hi! Nice site!