Social bookmarking: Diigo and Delicious

I started using social bookmarking last year after using Bookmarks in Firefox became messy and inefficient. I set up folders and subfolders but I was bookmarking so many sites--to read later on or for future use--that it became impossible to go back and find the sites I saved. Firefox 3 has a tagging feature for bookmarks, but I thought if I was going to go through all of my bookmarks and tag them, I might as well use a social bookmarking service so I could organize my bookmarks and also access them from any internet connection.

I came across Delicious early on. It’s a popular service and probably one of the oldest. It’s simple, dependable, and easy to use. Delicious integrates nicely with Firefox (just three small buttons next to the address bar). You can pull up a sidebar with your bookmarks or you can access your bookmarks through www.delicious.com. I also like keyboard shortcuts and the ability to keep individual bookmarks private.

I was happy using Delicious and some months later, I stumbled across Diigo. Diigo is similar to Delicious but it has more of a social aspect. You can leave comments and sticky notes on sites that other Diigo users can see. You can highlight text on sites so you can reference the important parts later. That's handy for research. The service emphasizes social networking with groups and friends. There’s social networking in Delicious, but it’s more prominent in Diigo.

The downside to Diigo is that you have to install a whole toolbar if you want to integrate it with your browser. I didn’t see an immediate way the added features in Diigo would be beneficial to me, but I tried it out anyway.

I imported my Delicious bookmarks into Diigo easily enough. All my tags carried over. The bookmarking aspect of Diigo is exactly the same as Delicious, so I didn’t need to figure out anything new to use Diigo.

I used Diigo for a month and a half and then switched back to Delicious. Why? For starters, I was using Diigo exactly the way I used Delicious. I wasn’t leaving sticky notes on any sites, and I wasn’t highlighting any text. I didn't use the social aspect of Diigo because I had no use for it. So I updated my Delicious bookmarks and uninstalled the Diigo toolbar.

The only thing I miss about Diigo is the hot bookmarks list. I do think it’s better set up than the Popular and Recent bookmark lists in Delicious. Anyone can see Diigo’s hot bookmarks, though, without using the service. (Same goes for the Popular and Recent lists in Delicious. You don’t have to use it to see them.)

Delicious is all I need in a bookmarking service, so that’s why I went back to it. What are your thoughts on social bookmarking? Which service do you use?