I just looked at the new research megatool Diigo and though several bloggers have covered it in the past and in previous incarnations (including our charming leader) I think they really missed the boat when many called it an unexciting entry into the crowded social bookmarking space. This is a web based knowledge worker’s dream come true, it’s the kind of thing that makes me love web apps.
The Reno, Nevada based company’s name is an acronym for “Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff.” It does offer a browser bookmarklet, but you’ll want to grab the Firefox or IE toolbar to use the best Diigo has to offer.
In addition to nailing the basics in social bookmarking, there are many features here that give this system huge value whether or not it ever builds a network effect from a large number of users.
My favorite feature? When you highlight a word on any page a drop down menu automatically appears (see image below) that lets you:
- search for the highlighted words on the web with any of four search engines
- search for highlighted terms in four social bookmarking systems
- do a blog search for highlighted terms
- search for your terms in the entire site you are on (Google, Yahoo, Ask site: search)
- search for inbound links to the URL you are on in four different search engines (including Technorati and Google)
- search for your highlighted terms in seven different verticals from local to TV to stocks.
These search functions are all rearrangable by drag and drop from an admin page and it’s not nearly as complicated to use as it might sound. This drop down menu is also one of many places you can take highlighted text directly to a blog post in a number of hosted blogging platforms with APIs.
In case you haven’t already gone to the Diigo site and started using the system based solely on the above, here’s some more.
The social bookmarking function is very nice. Easy public/private designation with the default being your choice. Cached copies of every page you bookmark, a feature that has proven invaluable to me several times in the otherwise unusable Furl.net.
The site is largely about annotation, though. I can tell the Diigo toolbar to show me whenever a page I’m on has had notes left by myself or other users, whichever I prefer. I can leave stickynotes, private pop-up annotation, attached to any highlighted text and those notes will remain available whenever I return to the page later. I can also email a copy of any page, marked up with my notes, to people who are not Diigo users and they will still be able to see my annotation. Very cool.
Bookmark simultaneously in other social bookmarking systems, find my search terms on a page and highlight them different colors, search my or everyone’s archives by title, URL, notes or full text. This service is amazing! So many times I’ve used a “Technorati This” bookmarklet or a “del.icio.us look up” bookmarklet to do just two of the numerous things that Diigo does with a single click.
I am very impressed and would feel ridiculous if I removed this toolbar from my browser and went back to performing any of these functions manually. There would have to be something terribly wrong that I’m not seeing yet. You can call me on it in a month, I’ll bet I’m still using this. Using Diggo doesn’t even mean abandoning Del.icio.us – it’s easy to use both at once and gain all the functionality of Diigo.
Ok, enough gushing – what improvements would be good to see? More date stamping, I can see who has bookmarked a page but it’s not easy to see when. Dedicated notes pages unattached to any particular URL I’m bookmarking, just to add to my archives on a given topic. The ability submit notes and images by phone. Both notes pages and phone submission are possible with the open source tool Markaboo. Recommended users, there’s no reason not to offer me users, URLs and tags that overlap with my own archives.
All in all, this is an awesome tool that must have taken loads of work to put together. I wish this company a lot of luck, I think they have made a very cool product.
I thought they launched publicly on July 24th:
http://mashable...s-nobody-cares/
Anyway, I’m sure they’ll like your post much more than mine.
Nope, it’s tomorrow. And yes, I’m sure they will.
isn’t this pretty similar to stumbleapon?
A comparison would be interesting, but Stumbleupon strikes me as being a different bird – it’s largely about entertainment vs being suitable for more serious work like this is.
Wow! This does look very cool. Thanks Marshall for the unbiased review
You do realize IE has had annotation for some time now, right?
For a site that launches tomorrow, it seems to be fully open today.
Hey Marshall,
I was invited to beta-test Diigo a few weeks ago, and I agree, it is an awesome annotation system. I am pretty sure they launched publically last week, from the original email I received:
” I would like to invite you to preview our closed beta before our public launch on July 24. (note: our service is still under closed beta before the public launch. Please let me know if you would like an invitation to gain access.) “
Tom, don’t make me compare emails with you
I’ll clarify above that it’s been floating about lately.
Maybe they are just having two public launches
I think the product would warrant it! lol
Who cares when it launches, I just have to say. This is one amazing piece of software, a development proud to be part of. The developers of this project have created an outstanding product that I for one love. Ang the toolbar that they also supply you with has some pretty amazing featuers built in it. If you ask me, I think Diigo will be a new buzz product, something everyone will be talking about, wanting to be part of, and of course contributing to.
I love this tool. Outside of the tagging, I use this for research and class discussions. I can send people from class or on my work team to a site and we can have an active discussion there and comment on specific parts. In addition, I really like the send to blog capabilities. There are so many times where I stumble upon a site and have a quick comment. The blogging tool allows me to send the information. It’s a great way to make quick posts and to create a blog repository of data.
I have used this since i first heard of it here, and as soon as i did–no more delicious! I try to get everyone to use it, and frankly i dont know what more people arent. its a great product.
Dang, and I was just getting really comfortable with Google Notebooks!
Looks really nice, I like it so far!
Marshall, Thank you very much for great review. Having worked on ths product very hard for the past many months, the entire Diigo team is elated to have the endorsement of the King of Web 2.0 Blogs.
You hit the nail on the head- yes, indeed, it is designed for people doing online research. By online research, we do not just mean serious stuff, but anything that requires finding, consuming, gathering, organizing, extracting, processing, and sharing information online. Thes include, for example, collecting receipes, putting up a wish list, doing comparison shopping, …
In terms of launch, we have been doing what may be called a soft launch, when we focus exclusively on the blogging community and spend sometime to inform and interact with the blog community about our site’s public availability. The press release announcing public launch (and citing some reviews from bloggers) and the contact with journalitst will happen afterwards. We think this allows the full leverage of the strength of the blog media — interactive, personal, more informal and direct.
As any good software, Diigo’s design is inspired and guided by our personal needs. As heavy online researchers, we are still far from satisfied with the current product — you will see a lot more improvements and innovations from us in the near future
Having a drop-down menu appear every time I highlight a word is, to me, the online equivalent of having a kitten constantly underfoot, as highlight automatically copies on my system. I had to uninstall Hyperwords because of this, but can use Advanced Dork because it requires an additional right click. I see a battle brewing…
Yeah if there is one thing that bothers me its that the diigo menu automatically pops up whenever I highlight text. I dont like that \=
@Tom, under [Options] you can disable the automatic drop down menu. So it ends up only showing the menu when you right click.
I am looking for a site offering those ‘annotation’ features which are really ugly in Diigo.
thanks for the tip! i’ve heard of diigo but never though of leaving (gasp!) del.icio.us
i think you may have convinced me to switch!
When did TechCrunch turn into a cheerleader?
Mike, I think Marshall is speaking from his own user experience. I, too, think this is by far the best web annotation tool I found. I spend countless hours doing online research daily. – cannot imagine without it!
Hey marshall, what’s up with all the cocky/rudeness?
“And yes, I’m sure they will.”
“don’t make me compare emails with you”
Maybe this hasn’t been your intention, but you’ve been sounding pretty weird lately. It seems as if you’re starting to act like you’re the king (or at least the side-kick of the king
) of Web 2.0 now, writing for TC and all. I used to love your reviews and value your comments before you landed here, although it almost seems as if you’re writing more for the glory and trying really hard to come in the good sides of everybody, your readers, the companies, everybody. Nothing personal, just the way I feel.
Anyway, I’d just like to say I too got an invite to diigo’s launch and it does say July 24th, also I’m pretty sure checking it out a few days ago and finding it publically open. So I’m not sure why you would even challenge this, when you say “Nope, it’s tomorrow.” Pete was right, as I’m sure anyone else who got the REAL diigo invite would agree, and it’s as if you are trying miserably hard to show people that you know better than any other blogger.
John, thanks for both the kind words and words of caution – I’ll keep both in mind. The company told me that the offical public launch was tommorow, but I’ve since changed the post to reflect the ambiguity around this. Totally don’t mean to be arrogant or rude – thanks for letting me know my comments came across that way.
I think this is a very accurate review. Personally, I find it hard not to “gush” over something like this. I especially appreciate their attention to the needs and criticisms of their users. The friendly and helpful Diigo staff is almost as impressive as their product!
This review smells a little like someone is getting a few franklins.
I’ve been using this for a while. You should point out that the search options are fully customizable, in that you can add your own sites to search on and create your own categories. Also there is no need to ditch del.icio.us completely as you can set Diigo to auto post whatever you bookmark with them to del. In fact one cool thing is if you have highlight an image and bookmark a page with Diigo, the image will show up in your del.icio.us bookmarks. I think you can also set it to auto post to other social bookmark sites to (rawsugar / myweb)
I like the tool, but there is no context around the shared comments at each site. Just typing a brief discription of the site seems pointless. Maybe when there is critical mass, the comments will provide some type third party insight to the URL, but as I use the tool I don’t know what to write? I’ll keep watching to see how others use it.
I do like this. Integration with del.icio.us is also excellent. For someone who does a lot of research on the web like I do, I hope the company is successful. Definitely a keeper and that is more than I can say for 90% of most recent web offerings.
I have been using Diigo to highlight and stickynote on our intranet web pages for my everyday jobs. I easily catch up what I though and what colleagues said two weeks ago when in a con-call because all those memories are now directly on those pages instead of in my brain or in my notebook that has been a mess since long ago. Diigo’s searching ability helps a lot too … “tag:work vista” gets me everything about “vista” from web pages that are tag’ed to ‘work’.
Any new social app is good for people that work on SEO
I haven’t tried this one yet and will be going right over now to give it a go…
Thanks!
什么时候可以推出中文版本啊，期待中
Luogo interessante, buon disegno, lo gradisco, signore! =)
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Diigo is the website of the future…it rocks
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yes i agree with you..diigo makes it much easier to bookmark web pages.
Lorenzo
http://www.apartmentsopen.com