Diigo is del.icio.us meets Wikalong. That is bookmarking meets site comments. It is something that del.icio.us has the potential to do, but doesn’t do. And it is something that is (certainly if a critical user mass is reached) that would be extraordinarily useful. But what actually is it?

Let me explain by continuing this comparison with del.icio.us. Take this page it is the del.icio.us page for Google.com. It is full of comments about the site. Now everyone knows what Google is so the comments aren’t very useful. But maybe you are about to sign up for a service and want to check whether it is reputable, or maybe you’re buying a product and you want to check for other peoples reviews. So lets now take this page instead to see what people think of Diigo.com. So what is the difference between diigo and del.icio.us? They both have this comments thing for sites. Well two words are the difference.

Diigo is . You don’t have to fish around by going to del.icio.us to see what people think of a site, it is written on the page in front of you. People can even specify particular words that they are interested in, or want to comment about. Perhaps they could highlight the $100 shipping costs on a products page in the small print. Or the clear flaw in a politician’s argument. The potential is pretty obvious. It makes the web experience interactive. Everyone sees the same pages — why shouldn’t you talk about them. It truly is therefore annotation. Not just bookmarking but also highlighting and adding “stickies”. It is like Gabbly’s live chat for every page, but comments are permanent.

I am sure you will agree this is quite a complicated idea, and since the vast majority of surfers still use browser based bookmarks it seems to me that broadscale adoption is a long way off. And that is a shame. Diigo will only be “worth” using if more people are using it. Luckily at the moment they let you post to somewhere else at the same time so that you can keep your del.icio.us up to date whilst you try out the new tools.

So diigo is a smart idea, a clever one even if (thinking Wikalong again) it is not new. The implementation of the idea is what determines the flopp factor for this service. And quite frankly I am not impressed. It comes as an extension for Firefox and a plugin I imagine for IE, or for the worst case scenario it is a bookmarklet for any other browser. I am using the extension and it is awkward. By default diigo gives itself far too much. A right click reveals a diigo command at the top. A single click gives another diigo menu. It also gives you an extra toolbar (which I hastily removed). The right click menu is silly too. It should just say “Bookmark…” but no it is a diigo subsection that you have to move across into. Messy.

The screenshot to the right gives you a good comparison between the way diigo and del.icio.us integrate themselves. Note that the “Search Web” thing is also diigo’s doing and it opens sub menu after sub menu all for absolutely no reason. Search is easy enough. I click my search box and type. It is more of a bother to highlight something and then navigate through that maze of engines to find some decent results. Why they include this is beyond me. Do one thing, don’t make a mess at the same time. The windows that pop up for you to fill in notes, and tags about the bookmark/highlight/sticky you are making are browser based. It is not a pop up. This is nice I suppose. But it too is cluttered with stuff I am not interested in. The amount of options available in the options panel of this extension gives some indication of how over complex this tool has been made. Yes it is a good idea, but good implementation is needed. And right now, with a website UI that also leaves much to be desired, diigo just doesn’t have it.

If you would like to give this service a whirl yourself, then be in touch and I will invite you in.