Social Bookmarking: Diigo

Diigo takes social bookmarking to a new level, but how did we get here?

As we continue to move to more cloud-centric computing, we've not only changed where we store our data and applications, but we've fundamentally changed the way we retrieve, use and recall information we find. In the not-so-distant past, the information or websites we wanted to remember were stored in a set of static bookmarks tied into our Web browser.

In 2003, Joshua Schacther turned is link blog into a new way to not only store a collection of bookmarks online, but to share and categorize them as well, the new site was called del.icio.us. Del.icio.us took advantage of tagging to help users organize and create topic hierarchies, and make a website about particular topic easy to find.

Delicious is a great way to keep track of the sites you want to re-visit, but as we consume more information and save more and more web pages, we may forget why we bookmarked a website in the first place. Or we may just want to take notes and keep them with the page for future reference.  Diigo does that and a whole lot more.

The ability to share and collaborate takes Diigo from just another online bookmarking site to social networking - in essence social bookmarking. Diigo gives you the ability to:

• Categorize (using tags)
  
• Share
  
• Add Sticky Notes
  
• Highlight
• Save a copy of a web page
• Save images or screen shots
  

Diigo is self-described as a cloud-based information management system. It is a flexible, multi-function tool that can help organize the information you find on the Internet. Diigo provides a set of tools you can use with your favorite Web browser, iPad, iPhone or Android phone to annotate and save information to your cloud-based library.  You can access your personal Diigo library from any internet connection and the mobile tools allow you to download web pages for offline reading.

If you're an information addict, you should try Diigo; it's versatile, and easy to use, and offers both free and premium accounts.