Cool Tools: Best of Social Bookmarking 

Having trouble keeping up with the torrent of online information? Thank goodness for social bookmarking. With this handy tool, users can not only save and organize their personal collections of “bookmarked” Web pages, but they can also share them. We polled members of Classroom 2.0, an online community of educators, who selected the following services as their favorites in social bookmarking.

del.icio.us

Among the best-known and most popular Web-based tools, del.icio.us actually coined the term “social bookmarking.” Its innovation? Introducing tagging to the mix, which enabled the sharing of links and of globally aggregated results based on tag phrases. Because users could see how others bookmarked a site, del.icio.us also measured the popularity of Web sites by category. Del.icio.us boasts a large user base, and while it does offer the standard features (networks/groups, browser tools integration, and RSS feeds), the site seems rather spartan when compared with diigo. Created by Joshua Schachter in 2003 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005.

www.diigo.com

Diigo is my personal favorite for social bookmarking. Users can not only import del.icio.us or other bookmarks, they can also update those other services using diigo. In addition, diigo’s informational video and screencasts—accessible on its home page—provide a great introduction to social bookmarking. Diigo’s secondary features include a rich set of browser tools that allows users to highlight passages and leave comments on Web pages for other diigo users to see (a great way for teachers to effectively assess student assignments). Diigo also lets you send an email or blog post directly from a Web page, automate a daily blog post of your bookmarks with comments, or create blog or site widgets with your bookmarks. Founded in 2005 by Wade Ren.

www.furl.net

Classroom 2.0 users tapped Furl for its amazing research feature: all bookmarked sites are archived, so you can retain access to a site’s material even if the site no longer exists or has changed. Furl also allows users to rate Web sites—a very nifty feature—and its front page displays the most popular recent links from all members. Using its rating system, Furl actually personalizes links and topics, and tells you about other members whose similar usage patterns might make their links valuable resources for you. Kudos to Furl for a well-written FAQ, great for those new to social bookmarking concepts. Founded in 2003 by Mike Giles and acquired by LookSmart in 2004.