March 20, 2008

Diigo Revamps Social Bookmarking Service with v3.0

Mark Hendrickson

44 comments »

We got word last night that Diigo will be releasing version 3.0 of its social bookmarking and webpage annotation service today. The company is calling it its biggest upgrade since 2006, when former TechCrunch writer Marshall Kirkpatrick gushed extravagantly over it.

I’m personally not a daily user of Diigo, even though going back and reading Marshall’s review makes me think I should be. I’ll just have to try v3.0 in full later today. A demonstration video, embedded below, shows an entirely new user interface. We’re also told that the code has been rebuilt and over 100 new features have been added. Social networking has been further developed, too, so you can share your bookmarks with friends and groups more effectively.

Diigo is explicitly pitting itself against Delicious by stating: “in the battle field of social bookmarking 2.0, we believe only delicious and Diigo are still strong players, with Diigo clearly the leader in terms of features and innovations…People who have seen both Diigo 3.0 and delicious 2.0 also think that we are far ahead of delicious 2.0.” Sounds like Diigo’s trying to play David to Yahoo’s Goliath.

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Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

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Comments

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  1. Otis Gospodnetic

    Seeing such self-congratulating, self-boosting statements is a major turn-off. Truly great people don’t boast about themselves. Same with web services.

  2. Richard

    @Otis: So how’s that different to your 10 Reasons for Simpy vs. Delicious?

  3. Roy

    @Richard: Hypocrisy is the greatest form of flattery?

  4. Stuart Ecles

    This is an incredibly buggy site. I get 500 errors, the OpenID completely doesn’t work (it says the site is https://smasher/) and it seized up when I tried to upload an avatar.

    If you’re gonna boast. test.

  5. Erik

    I can’t get by the aweful logo.

  6. Ed

    I am a long time Diigo user and I have always loved it. They do offer more features than Delicious. If you are wary of switching then they offer the ability to simultaneously post to other sites. Personally, I still keep a Delicious acct and have Diigo dual post there. Can’t wait to try all the new ver3 features.

  7. mrshl

    I wonder how they’re going interact with Firefox 3 and the sql lite bookmark system. The single biggest reason I use Del.icio.us is their outstanding Firefox extension. My impression is that Del.icio.us 2.0 has been tracking the development of Firefox 3.0, and that part of the new del.icio.us will be a new extension that integrates tightly with Firefox Places.

    Is Diigo going to do anything like that? Or is their focus entirely on the Web?

  8. Matt

    What software do you guys use to make videos of your computers desktop?

  9. myvidster

    diigo, simpy, delicious, whatever!!! It is all about video bookmarking! Don’t mind me I am just boosting my service :).

    myvidster (built by me for you)
    http://www.myvidster.com

  10. Navneet

    @Matt:Any how is that related to this post?? Stop Spamming.

  11. John Knight

    diigo’s cache is the killer function–I use it purely for that, otherwise I like the barebones simplicity of delicious. Hence, I use both, because, amazingly, diigo can (and does) simultaneously bookmark to other sites, including delicious.

    If push ever came to shove, I would get rid of delcious. I hope it never comes to this.

  12. DaveS

    These guys have been trying to make it for a year now… and can’t break more that 70K users. At which point do you give up?

  13. b0mmel

    really seems to be the best bookmarking service around. love the sidebar. will try over easter weekend.

  14. Tracksuit CEO

    I made the switch to Diigo when I began building my team of bloggers. Since then I’ve won everyone I talk to over to Diigo’s robust approach to bookmarking and annotation. It’s apparent that Diigo was founded by researchers because, unlike Del.icio.us, you are able to grab more than just that line-and-a-half of text. I compare Del.icio.us to AOL in it’s early days, as bookmarkers mature they will gravitate from accessibility and simplicity to Diigo: the Google of online bookmarking.

  15. compwoman

    Diigo one of the best and useful services

  16. Rasmus

    mrshl,
    I agree, the Firefox integration is the key element. If Diigo has excellent Fx integration it will get a chance from me.
    -Rasmus

  17. Philip

    The latest diigo toolbar is working great for me on firefox 2. In fact, I really like some of the improvements–the “tagging” suggestions are very helpful.

    I think that every classroom teacher should look at this tool for possible integration into their arsenal of teaching aids.

    And what great stuff for blogging–being able to share annotations with others inside a blog entry is extremely powerful tool for communicating ideas.

    Great Work Diigo Team!

  18. Otis Gospodnetic

    Those wishing for tight integration of social bookmarks and Firefox Places (in FF 3) should keep an eye on GMarks and Smarky. The former is a FF extension for Google Bookmarks users, and the latter if a FF extension for Simpy users. The author of the two is the same, and is on top of FF 3 development.
    Both extensions have a *lot* of features, have a look:
    http://groups.google.com/group/smarky/web/features

    Richard:
    I was waiting for that one. :)

    DaveS:
    Diigo has only 70K users? Where did you get that number? I’m sure it’s not public.

  19. Tim

    Looks like a more useful service then del.icio.us.

    Their logo is just goofy looking though. What is that a saber tooth smiley face?

  20. john

    Tracksuite, “I compare Del.icio.us to AOL in it’s early days, as bookmarkers mature they will gravitate from accessibility and simplicity to Diigo: the Google of online bookmarking.” — so well said

  21. rijul

    it’s starting to get shilly in here.

    aside from that, i’ll try it, but i’m not terribly anxious to find what errors it’ll have in opera.

  22. I Am Not Posting To Spam My Blog

    @19: That’s how my perception saw it as well before it made two mental Rubik’s Cube turns and eventually figured out it was two guys shaking hands. But when I glance at it the first thing I see is still a smiley with a really droopy handlebar moustache.

    Please, if you design a logo, before printing the letterheads give it to your mum or a friend and say ‘what does that look like to you’. You can never, ever objectively judge something like that yourself - if you draw two ‘i’s to look like two people shaking hands, to you it will look like two people shaking hands every time you look at it, even if to most people it looks like a weird face.

  23. Dbo

    From my experience, Diigo is far superior to Delicious. I’ve been using Diigo for a couple years now and I love it. Haven’t run into any major problems, but if by chance I do run into an issue, I just contact the Diigo team and they help me solve it ASAP.

    Diigo has been indispensable in my university research… the highlighting and especially the list feature have been a great help. I also use Diigo’s group functions in my classes and with my students. Everyone seems to love seeing what others are bookmarking and what they are saying about their bookmarks.

    Honestly, I can’t find a single bad thing to say about Diigo. No disrespect to Delicious, but I personally feel Diigo is a superior service.

  24. Anon

    I believe that the diigo website is down at the moment……………………………………………………but I believe it has just gone up again as I am writing this. And now it is down once again as I try to look around. Hoped to try this service.

  25. Otis Gospodnetic

    Funny they made comparison to Delicious 2.0.

    Delicious 2.0 is having problems scaling (which is why it hasn’t been released yet, despite being announced months ago)

    Diigo 3.0 can’t scale either:
    “Sorry, we are experiencing temporary difficulties.
    Please try again later.
    If the problem persists, please kindly report to us.
    … … …

    Sure TechCrunch is popular, but I doubt it brings *that* much traffic. Pretty bad…..

  26. Nigel

    I have used Diigo for over a year now and been priviliged to participate in the v3 trials. It’s a great and reliable product and the features available now surpass the other participants in this space.

    When I started using social bookmarking I opted for del.icio.us and Blinklist then adding Ma.gnolia and then Diigo. As previous posters have already shared Diigo offers the ability to bookmark in other services that offer an API. (I also used a third party FF extension that bookmarked in multiple services, which I dumped when moving to Diigo, which I don’t recall the name of.)

    IMHO Blinklist seem to be floundering, their API has been broken for a while and they don’t seem to be able to “finish” their various expeditions into advanced services which is a shame.

    Ma.gnolia - needs some Duracell performance. Del.icio.us still very basic despite V2 being touted - a no show yet.

    I think that Diigo still have work to do for V3.1; but they do seem to be an agile user driven developer.

  27. Dbo

    Funny - I don’t have any trouble with Diigo’s website. Could it be something else on your end Otis?

  28. Otis Gospodnetic

    Dbo:
    Nothing wrong on my end, it was a server-side error. Restarting webapps helps.

  29. Mase

    Is there toolbar compatible with Firefox 3? I’m trying to install it but it’s not working. I can’t figure out if it’s due to their website or if it’s the fact that I’m running Firefox 3.

    In either case, they should support Firefox 3 ASAP.

  30. Nigel

    FF3 is already supported - I am using FF3B4.

  31. Sameer

    I use Diigo almost everyday. I cant say enough good things about the application. Keep up the good work!

  32. Mase

    FYI, I eventually got the toolbar to work in FF3 by right clicking and manually copying the url for the plugin into FF’s url field. Not sure why it didn’t work by directly clicking on the “Install Toolbar” button.

  33. Mase

    BTW, after playing with it for a while now, this service looks awesome. A major improvement over delicious.

  34. BillH

    This is great tool; more than just bookmarking. It’s nice to be able to highlight sections of a web page and then later extract just those highlighted parts; great for note-taking/research or just separating the wheat from the chaff!

  35. Phil Butler

    Mark, I have always liked your articles. I have one kind of important question. Why did you write about a version of Diigo you have admittedly never seen or tested yet?

    I don’t want to be unfair, but I have tested over 300 or these startups myself and I know it is hard to make time to actually do so. Sometimes my articles sound rather thin even if I have actually been to the sites, so how can this be fair to Diigo or any other viable startup?

    Diigo is actually quite a bit of a departure from simple bookmarking and I just got done putting their new toolbar through my rather fumble fingered testing. It is quite advanced and could be extraordinary with some effort.

    I really think TC owes us and these innovators more than an opinion and a promise to check it out.

    Always,

    Phil Butler

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  37. AkoZ

    I’ve tried other app there to take back all my researchs on the web, this app is really now the best to be used, they grow so much, but not so unuseful or just for fun, it’s a real webtool that diigo … now they get to social sharing like knowledges and many other options are to be created… groups and list (of automatic bookmark tags searching) RSS, slides of sites, reuse of annotations in one place, notes, friends … diigo will explode next but soon, and it could have to be more protected against trolls… facebook or delicious have now a serious competitor .
    let’s try it… it’s a very organised tool, which grows with all the users … google tries to follow, but they are really far lost against diigo, yes, true. just try it and watch. not an old app…