Comments for Diigo Tackles Recommendations

Diigo Tackles Recommendations

2008-03-20T13:00:00Z

Diigo is a social bookmarking and research tool that offers so many features it's overwhelming. I've been excited about it before, only to find that after a short period of time, I stop using it - in favor of something simpler. I have been really excited about it, in fact, but even the highlights of today's new version leave me with tempered enthusiasm.

The highlight of the new version is recommendations. The new Diigo offers a number of social networking type features that in-and-of themselves aren't worth a lot to me, but if they can do some number crunching and recommend people and content that I may want to subscribe to - that's gold.

]]> Recommendations

What's the biggest crime committed by Del.icio.us? It's not leveraging the huge amount of data the service holds for some recommendations. Why on earth, in this data-centric era, isn't every social bookmarking service making bookmarking social and smart? If Yahoo! held an Amazon-style contest for recommendation algorithms that could be run against Del.icio.us, they could set up a Yahoo! News style page that was personalized like nobody's business. We'd all come back daily to read Del.icio.us, they could run ads up the wazoo and everyone would be beside themselves with happiness.

Instead we'll have to look to a pre-acquisition startup with neither network effect nor scaling problems. Diigo has potential to change the social bookmarking game just because they are offering recommendations. The recommendations aren't even very good yet because there's very few people using the service and the algorithm appears quite simple. I imported several hundred bookmarks from Ma.gnolia and perhaps Diigo will think deeper thoughts about my history after a few hours. I'm not so sure, though. It's still worth a look because it has so much potential.

You might also like the annotation features, though in all likelihood they will prove more trouble than they are worth unless you're an academic. You can associate an OpenID account with your Diigo account now, too. That's good.

Trust

Checking out Diigo could be pretty pain-free. The service does a good job of importing your bookmarks from elsewhere and allows you to publish simultaneously to your account at Del.ico.us, Ma.gnolia or Simpy. If, that is, you are willing to trust the Diigo people with the password to your usual social bookmarking account. Doesn't Ma.gnolia at least have oAuth support so I don't have to do that? Discussion about user authentication protocols as part of data portability seem common enough by now that it's outright offensive to be asked for your password to another web app. If you can deal with that, then there's no reason not to give Diigo a try.

Check out Diigo for yourself, it could be just what you're looking for. It's getting closer to something I can imagine using regularly and really appreciating - but it's not there yet. I'll keep an eye on the recommendations feature because if that ends up working out well, it would be reason enough to switch to Diigo.

Comment from IdeaTagger on 2008-03-20

2008-03-20T14:09:38Z

Given that start-ups are constantly and rightly encouraged to make recommendations easy for their users to make, it is ironic that recommendations are usually worth more when they are difficult to make. In other words, the more pain you go to to recommend something to me, the more likely I am to pay attention. So perhaps all these start-ups should be striving to make recommendations more difficult - not easier.

As I posted yesterday to my blog, this led me to an idea for a recommendation model. It won't win the Amazon or Flixter contest because, well, it isn't an algorithym.

The idea is to have a virtual currency that can be used to consume content say on Flixter or iTunes or Facebook; and have users use up some of that currency when they make a recommendation, but have it doubled if their recommendation gets consumed by the recipient - even more if the recipient indicates that they like it or in turn recommends it to someone else. Could make for a very interesting model I think.

Comment from Vyrotek on 2008-03-20

2008-03-20T15:45:49Z

"...it is ironic that recommendations are usually worth more when they are difficult to make..."

Exactly the point I tried to make about services like twitter and friendfeed. Even if we make the smartest and craziest algorithms there is still something about manually recommending something and the extra effort that makes a recommendation have a lot more value.

I kind of like your idea. Instead of making it really easy to recommend something or guessing what info you should share based on an algorithm, maybe it should be reward based. I think with the right 'reward' you could generate a pretty interesting system.

Comment from Wade on 2008-03-20

2008-03-20T15:58:58Z

Marshal,

Thanks for the review. You are right that content recommendations can be of substantial value and Diigo is just getting started on this. Of course, Diigo 3.0 provides multiple ways for content discovery, in addition to recommendations: friends' bookmarks, subscribing to the latest content by tag(s) or site, social browsing through the diigo sidebar - people bookmarked this page or this site also bookmarked..., finding out the most popular bookmarks under certain tag(s) -- all these are great ways to discover content.

I have to disagree with this statement though: "You might also like the annotation features, though in all likelihood they will prove more trouble than they are worth unless you're an academic." Web highlights and sticky notes are proving to be a real productivity enhancer for lots of users. Group annotations have proven to be valuable for certain work groups also.

And if you are concerned about complexity, we have tried hard to make sure it is easier to use, even with a lot more features. Beginning users can quickly get on with the essential features without being bothered by the more advanced or social features.

Marshal, we would love to have you back so we can do some social browsing and annotation on Diigo :-) . FF3 is now very fast and there is no need to stick with Safari!

Comment from Dennis McDonald on 2008-03-20

2008-03-20T19:50:48Z

I received an invite today to join Diigo. Like many services, when I followed the emailed link, it took me to a page to sign up that did not allow me to answer basic questions like "what is this service and why should I consider signing up?" Fearing another me-too social networking site, I declined the invitation.

Comment from Rachel M on 2008-03-20

2008-03-21T04:11:52Z

Taking a moment to look around helps.