Diigo and Delicious
Several weeks ago, I wrote a post about the new features of Diigo, Version 5. As a result of that blog post, I was contacted by Maggie Tsai, co-founder of Diigo, who asked me to help update a comparison chart on their website. This post contains a ‘pretty’ version of that document. What do you think? Did I miss anything? Are you a Delicious user who spotted something inaccurate? Let me know in the comments!
Also, I’m really excited to help moderate a Classroom 2.0 session about Diigo version 5.0 on July 31st at 11:00 AM Central. You can participate in the webinar by visiting http://live.classroom20.com.
Follow the link for the feature to learn more about how each service implements it.
Organize your bookmarks with tags
Diigo, Delicious, and most modern browsers allow you to assign tags to your bookmarks. Tags are short descriptions of the bookmarks and allow for easy categorization and searching.
Both Diigo and Delicious (along with many other social bookmarking services) allow you to see what other users are bookmarking.
Anytime, anywhere access to your bookmarks
One of the nicest things about using a social bookmarking site is to have access to your bookmarks no matter what computer you are using. Simply log in to the site and all your bookmarks are right there.
Share your bookmarks with others
The social aspect of Diigo and Delicious lies in users’ ability to share bookmarks with others. Both services allow you to share sites with other users, through Twitter, or via e-mail. With both services, you can also see what your friends are bookmarking.
Powerful, customizable search tools
Search all public bookmarks in both services using powerful search tools. Search full text, tags, users, friends, or groups to find what you are looking for.
Groups (in Diigo) and Network Bundles (in Delicious) are contacts in your social bookmarking network who have similar interests. Network Bundles are a way to filter public bookmarks from different people in your network. The Groups function in Diigo allows you to share bookmarks with the members of the group who are not necessarily following your bookmarks. This gives you access to a very broad group of people who add relevant websites to the group’s library. Finally, in Diigo, groups are able to share their annotations, notes, and highlights publicly or only within the group. This allows for several layers of annotation and collaboration.
Diigo has very tight integration with major blogging platforms. Posting to a blog in Diigo is very flexible. You can change the frequency, type, included tags, and even specify the time that links are posted. This is still an experimental feature in Delicious as of this writing, and the process seems to be a little more complicated and less flexible than Diigo. Postings by Delicious can only be done daily at a specified time and cannot be limited to certain tags.
Tools and browser extensions to make bookmarking easier
Diigo and Delicious offer excellent tools that integrate into your browser to make adding sites to your library a snap. Add, share, and remember sites without leaving your browser.
Group your bookmarks into lists to add another layer of organization. Lists enable tighter focus of groups of web pages rather than the broad organization of tags. Public lists can be shared through direct links and published through RSS feeds.
Free iPhone and Android apps for bookmarking and reading from your mobile device
With version 5 of Diigo, you now have the option of installing applications on your mobile device for reading and adding bookmarks. Offline Reader for iPhone allows you to browse your bookmarks on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Add to your library while surfing, or download entire websites to your device for offline reading when you don’t have a connection. Power Note for Android allows you to add bookmarks, notes, images, snapshots, and text messages to your library. Both apps offer easy access to your unread items and sync seamlessly with your account. Diigo has designed both of these apps to integrate flawlessly with the website. Several apps are available for Delicious on iPhone and Android, but all are developed by third parties, and therefore not officially supported by Delicious.
iPad Safari browser bookmarklet
Called Web Highlighter for iPad Safari, this bookmarklet allows you to bookmark, highlight, annotate, and share websites while browsing on an iPad.
Highlight and annotate web pages
Diigo allows you to highlight text from web pages. You can also post notes and comments about what you highlighted. These comments can be public or private. If you have installed the Diigo Toolbar or are using the Diigolet applet, all of your annotations and the public annotations from others will be visible on the page. If you would like to share your annotations with people who don’t use Diigo, you can share the annotated link with them through Twitter, Facebook, email, IM, or your blog. You also have the option to share certain annotations, such as those from a group you belong to or your own private annotations.
Capture, mark up, and share images and text
On your desktop, the Diigo toolbar allows you to capture images and text directly from a website. You can then use the built-in annotation tools to mark up the capture and save it to Diigo. From your library, you can add tags and descriptions, as well as put the capture into lists or share it with groups.
Archive web pages just as you see them
More powerful than the ability to capture an image or part of a website is Diigo’s ability to archive an entire page. When creating a bookmark with the Diigo toolbar, select the check box to take a snapshot of the page as you see it. When you find the bookmark in your library, you will have the ability to look at a cached version of the page, as well as a png image of the page as it appeared when you saw took the screen shot. If you revisit a page and it has changed, you can upload another cached version as well as another image. Annotations and highlights show up on the image, but not on the cached version.
Sync bookmarks between Diigo and Delicious
Diigo allows you to automatically add new Diigo bookmarks to your Delicious library. This way, if you have already developed a network and library on Delicious, you can maintain both libraries effortlessly.
If you are a teacher, Diigo has a special tool set for you to use Diigo with your students. Once you have your approved educator account, you can create a private group for your students. You can also create accounts for them without email addresses. By default, student profiles are private, and students can only communicate with each other, nor are they searchable in public listings on Diigo. There are many other benefits to Diigo educator accounts. For more information, check out http://help.diigo.com/teacher-account/faq.
There are two ways to log in to Delicious – if you created a Delicious account, you can use that, or you will need a Yahoo account if you don’t already have one. If you don’t want to create an account on the site, Diigo gives you the opportunity to log in with one of several different accounts that you already may have including Google, Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, or OpenID.
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Thanks for doing this – it’s great. For all the extra features Diigo has, I still prefer Delicious – MUCH easier to bookmark websites, and that’s my primary goal.
Good for you! The ultimate thing is to use something that you are comfortable with and that works for you. We need to use the tools that are valuable and worthwhile for us. Personally, I use the added functionality of Diigo all the time, and that makes its service more valuable for me. I’m glad that you have made an informed decision.
Good comparison! I still like Delicious simplicity ;P
One important detail that could make someone to decide on Delicious is the tag number limit per bookmark. It admits 50 tags per bookmark versus the 20 tags limit on Diigo. I wonder how the Diigo import tool handles this…
Thanks for the comment! I didn’t realize the tag limits existed. Personally, I don’t think I have used more than about 15 tags on one bookmark. I’ll have to try out too many tags and see what Diigo does with it. 😉
I use both but I’m reverting back to delicious because it is so quick. And if I have tagged the site previously then delicious remembers the tags I added to that site originally and also the date it was first added.
I have three delicious sites, for three aspects of my life, and I have been disappointed to learn that this is no longer possible since delicious is so closely aligned with Yahoo.
I find that Diigo is just as quick as Delicious for me. I like the suggested tags from Diigo, and if I use the toolbar, my previous tags are already highlighted. Diigo also has a date for my first bookmark as well as the first addition by another user. It’s really easy for me to separate my bookmarks into work and personal – I just have a separate, private list for my personal bookmarks. This allows me to keep everything together in one place. Delicious is a good service – I just prefer the extra features of Diigo so I can use them when I want to.
Don’t forget about Pinboard. Not free, but considering the imminent demise of Delicious, it’s a great alternative. Much simpler (and faster) than Diigo.
I hadn’t heard of pinboard before today. It sounds like an interesting service, but I’ve grown to rely on Diigo’s social features as much as the bookmarking. For me, the process is really quick and easy. I will definitely keep pinboard in mind as an alternative, though. Thanks for mentioning it!
Anyone heard about ZooTool? It seems as good as Delicious or Diigo.
Thanks for this comparison chart. Just what I was looking for. I am a faithful Delicious user for its ease and convenience–I love how quick it is to just bookmark something and then share the URL of a set of tagged bookmarks. However, I am now starting a graduate class and am constantly finding articles that I might use for my research and want to be able to make annotations and highlight the online articles I find. I have been bookmarking them in Delicious, but I think I will have to import them into Diigo to use the annotation and highlight features so that I can capture the relevant info in each article without having to wade through the entire article when I come back to it. Won’t be ditching Delicious, just will probably be using both sites for different purposes.
Glad you found the post useful!
It is really easy to set up your Diigo account to cross-post your bookmarks into Delicious, too. I have been using Diigo for my graduate studies, as well, and I find the annotation and sharing options incredibly powerful. One thing that has helped me, too, is to create or join a group in Diigo with my classmates. This way, we can share what we all have found and grow together. Often these groups take on a life of their own and extend beyond the time frame of the class itself.
What about shortcuts which we have for delicious?
There is sidebar for searching the tags.
Does Diigo has shortcuts/sidebar for all saving or searching the bookmarks?
As a matter of fact, it does. This is not a feature I use very often, but if you install the Diigo toolbar for Firefox, there is an icon on the far left that brings up the Diigo sidebar. There are two tabs in the sidebar – one to view annotations at the URL you are on, and another to search your library. This way, you can search your library without leaving the site you are on. Not only can you search your library, but you can search your lists or your metadata (descriptions, highlights, and tags).
Great question! I think I’m going to use that feature a little more from now on…
I love Diigo, but three years on and Diigo still haven’t got an Android offering worth mentioning. The ideal tool would allow me to tag, highlight and comment against highlights on web pages and pdf’s, plus access those docs with markups from anywhere. Diigo is so close, but just not there. Almost there is not good enough to justify the price, and it is pricey. I’ve come close to subscribing to the paid version several times, but been put off by the “almost there” problem. A good tool, on the verge of greatness. That three year gap suggests greatness will never be achieved. Prove me wrong Diigo, please!