Social bookmarking

Diigo, Delicious and FARK.com (yes this is a genuine social bookmarking site...but mainly used for taking the mickey out of real news)



The idea of joining another social networking site nearly had me spitting chips. I created accounts with both Diigo and Delicious but have drawn the line here____!

Both platforms claim to do the same thing and that is to somehow make your life easier. Diigo claims that if you spend most of your time reading and browsing the web, Diigo is indispensible. Delicious claim that they can "help you remember" your favourite links, blogs and sites and "save them for later". Already Diigo comes out in front as their selling point is strong and they provide an informative list of their claims where as I feel that Delicious may only be able to help me in my early stages of dementia.

Diigo

It's creators describe it as a personal research tool, a collaborative research platform, a social content site and a (I really like this one...) a knowledge-sharing community. They also go out there to say that they are environmentally friendly too. This is what I got out of their about page... nice one Diigo!

I discovered that Diigo can be used on any web browser and you can add Diigo to any web browser toolbar which allows you to save/bookmark your sites to both your browser favourites and your Diigo account. Diigo is easily accessible and has apps that can be downloaded onto your phone or iPad.

Joining Diigo is free but you can opt to purchase a "basic" or "premium" package. The basic package offering unlimited bookmarking, highlighting and no ads for $20 a year and the premium which offers the basic plus unlimited screen cached pages and screen shots (I don't know what that supposed to mean). I personally wouldn't invest in it as the bookmarking is unlimited and you get 1000 free highlights a year.

I found a great tutorial on you tube that even Diigo recommends it's users to watch.

Delicious

I was disappointed with what Delicious had to offer in their about page, but from what I gather in their page layout is that this is the place where you Discover, Network and Remember (dementia...). 

I found it easier to find people and follow them on this site and link it through my Facebook and Twitter accounts if I wanted to, I couldn't seem to do this with Diigo.

The Delicious icon can be added to toolbars of popular browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari and it provides an HTML embed code to allow other websites add a "Save this to Delicious"

<img src="http://delicious.com/static/img/logo.png" height="16" width="16" alt="Delicious" />

<a href="#" onclick="window.open('http://delicious.com/save?v=5&provider={Liz's Blogpost}&noui&jump=close&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title), 'delicious','toolbar=no,width=550,height=550'); return false;"> Save this on Delicious</a>

Like this-
Save this on Delicious
I also found a review by Technology Specialist Lee Kolbert, a user of both Delicious and Diigo and how she incorporates the two programs with her information gathering. This was interesting as she provides a good point to having both accounts.

I started moving across some of my bookmarked sites over to Delicious from my Safari browser. It was a shame to find that some of my bookmarked pages were no longer active or removed from the web. It made me wonder what if I had added this to Diigo and highlighted it and added sticky notes to this page before it was removed, somehow remain embedded in my adds list?

Before creating these accounts, I went through all my social media accounts to see if any of them provide a social bookmarking widget that would save me the bother of creating another username and password. According to eBiz, the top 15 reviewed social bookmarking sites, Twitter was rated number 1. I went back to my account to see where I could do this and discovered that you can save your search by going to your settings and saving the item you searched for, but from what I could save, they were other Twitter members and conversations, not websites. I have posted a question on Twitter about the "List" feature because I couldn't seem to figure that one out. Although, now that I think about it, I think that their interpretation of social bookmarking is slightly more social then it is about bookmarking.

I found that even though I think I prefer Diigo, it is probably best to embrace both sites because you can combine them as Lee Kolbert explains and they are useful tools to take with you to any profession you wish to choose.

Thanks for reading...

I thought I would quickly mention FARK.com (I know I thought it was rude too, but they provide a great explanation as to why). It is a social bookmarking site that points out news that they cannot believe made the news, quite an amusing read if you are into Good News Week or Gruen Planet...

Regards,

Liz