Delicious vs. Diigo: FIGHT!

I tested out two different social bookmarking sites. Initially I was thinking that these would be pretty much exactly the same thing. Like Flickr, both sites use non-hierarchical ways to classify information, using tags. They are also both free to use, and you can import bookmarks and install browser add-ons for both. Unfortunately, the link for the ‘bookmarklet’ link for firefox in Delicious was broken when I tried to add it two weeks ago. It’s still broken, so I gave up on that and installed the Diigo browser extension instead.


Delicious was originally named del.icio.us, did you wonder why? I certainly did because I just thought it looked silly, but there is a reason for it. The URL was created using a technique called a ‘domain hack’, which allows the site developer to be a bit more creative with naming, and means you can make the url spell out one word instead of adding .com at the end.

 
But after the most recent release it was rebranded as Delicious.com, and when you head to the website it is simply called Delicious.
Delicious works as a bookmarking tool, allowing you to ‘tag’ to add more information to the link you are keeping. It’s quite a good way to ensure that you can access your bookmarks from numerous devices. You can also see and share bookmarks with other people by way of the tags. This is cool, as I could see what other people have linked with the tag “library 2.0”, and it also gave me the option to subscribe to this tag- so I can see new items tagged with this name as they come up. 
 
Here is a search for the tag “library 2.0”

According to their website, Diigo is “pronounced as Dee'go, it is an abbreviation for "Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff." Diigo has many similar feature to Delcicious -  bookmark, organise and share links, tag your links so that you can search them later, and also search others in the ‘community’. I found that Diigo is slightly less intuitive for searching other’s links, as I had to go away from my homepage to do so. I can’t see a way to subscribe to this tag either. However, Diigo suggests other tags which are related to the one you searched for, allowing more information discovery!

Diigo also allows you to add notes to a webpage, and you can store images. I like that this seems a bit more of an added feature to just straight bookmarking. You can also work collaboratively on notes and links, and fine-tune your privacy settings. This is where Diigo comes out ahead of Delicious for me: you can set all to private in one go, or adjust them individually in groups. Delicious allows only for individual or ‘bulk’ actions, but no overall settings. There is also no ability to collaborate - you can share, but others can add notes to your bookmarks.

Personally, I think that this ability to add value to bookmarks and collaborate is what will keep me using Diigo. I think it would be a very valuable tool for working on projects both in research and in social or personal life. 

For our group discussion on social bookmarking, see the document here and add your thoughts.