Revision 12 September 2010: Please note some of the perceptions I initially shared in this post were incorrect, and have been thankfully corrected by several people in the comments. Please be sure to read through to the comments. Understand at present with the newly announced Diigo premium policy:
- All free Diigo accounts support unlimited bookmarking. There are other limits on “non-premium” accounts, but bookmarking is unlimited for all.
- A free educator account is available which provides more functionality than the “normal” free account.
ORIGINAL POST:
Social bookmarking is one of the foundational skills of computer literacy in the 21st century. For several years now, I’ve used Diigo as my primary social bookmarking website, and configured the site to cross-post automatically to Delicious.com. I like maintaining Delicious because I prefer the site’s simplicity in many ways to Diigo for looking up sites I’ve bookmarked in the past, as well as for maintaining a backup of these vital bookmarks. Diigo has announced on their blog they are no longer providing free, unlimited accounts. Standard free account users can only save a maximum of 50 highlights per month, although a free educator option is still available with fewer options than full premium accounts. If you pay $40 per year, you can enjoy a”premium” Diigo account with unlimited highlighting ability and other features. [I initially misread the feature set to be 50 bookmarks per month, but that is NOT the case. Thanks to Dr. Z for the correction. All accounts at this point permit unlimited bookmarking.]
This announcement follows relatively soon after the transition of Ning sites this past summer to a paid-only model. (Sponsored site options from Pearson are available of course, if you want to sell your soul to Lord Voldemort.) It appears we are seeing a variety of websites transition to new models to increase revenue as well as survive.
I’m not sure if I’ll opt to stay with Diigo. I need to analyze how many bookmarks I tend to save per month. I’m pretty confident that number exceeds 50. This pricing change from Diigo could provide a reason to switch our recommended and featured social bookmarking site in PI4BL from Diigo to Delicious, or to just feature Delicious instead of both sites.
Got a backup of your social bookmarks? Like many things in the digital world, with social bookmarking “the times they are a’changin.”
Do you think you’ll keep using Diigo on a free or paid account, if you’re currently a user? Which option do you think you’ll try and why?
H/T to Miguel Guhlin for the heads up on this Diigo pricing change. Looks like Miguel is opting to ditch.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
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Comments
18 responses to “Time to ditch Diigo or pay up?”
Wes,
I believe that you you have misunderstood Diigo’s new format. It says that “Bookmark number” is unlimited for all three options. There IS a limitation of 50 highlights. That is when you highlight text and can then share it with others. It appears that educators in grades NK-20 can have unlimited highlights.
Here is their listing: http://www.diigo.com/premium
I am disappointed that we are beginning to see these tools begin to cost money, but they are finding out that advertising will not pay all of their bills. As educators we tend to think that if something costs ANYTHING, then it is too expensive. That is not always the case. If I want to run a Ning for my class, it will cost me $40/year. If I want to run 6 of them (one for each period), then it can get to be quite expensive. Educators need to stop working with the deficit mentality, identify what they want and go for it.
Keep it up,
Leigh Zeitz (Dr. Z)
http://drzreflects
I, too, am an avid Diigo user and prefer Diigo to delicious, precisely because Diigo allows me to highlight and then annotate my online reading with sticky notes, and create lists and groups. In terms of providing scaffolded support for diverse learners, this is an indispensable tool.
I also find the Diigo experience to be a much more collaborative and connected one with the ability to view and engage in public and group sticky note conversations on online articles. You can’t get that with delicious.
In looking at the free education basic option, which includes unlimited bookmarking, highlighting, the ability to create lists, read later and tag items, all without ads, (http://www.diigo.com/premium) Diigo continues to meet my needs So I’ll be staying?but continue to automatically cross-post to delicious as you do.
I’ll continue with Diigo. We are continually getting teachers hooked, especially with the groups features. It will be interesting to see what new features they’ll ad an their response to some of the complaints, but I still prefer them over Delicious. Having said that, I do auto post to Delicious, in case I change my mind. 🙂
Leigh: Thanks for the clarification – you’re right, I misread the comparison of features! The limit of 50 IS on highlights, not bookmarks, so for me this is not a big deal. I’ve used the highlighting feature of Diigo a little, but I mainly use it for bookmarking. Thanks for the correction. I’ll correct my original post!
Hi Wes,
For the ed account the highlights are unlimited as well…
@Josh I agree the groups feature of Diigo is a HUGE benefit and advantage over Diigo. Last November when I facilitated a Google Workshop for Educators with Lisa Thumann she told me how Diigo groups were one of the BEST collaborative tools she used with teachers, and it caused me to use it in the spring for my “Technology 4 Teachers” class. I didn’t use it as extensively as I could or should have, but I definitely agree it’s an important function and a big differentiator in terms of value of different social bookmarking tools.
@Barbara: Thanks for the clarification as well. I’m sure I’ll give the free educator account a try for starters, and it may well meet all my needs.
I do pay for a variety of web services now (pro Flickr account, Textmarks account, 21classes.com blog, etc.) and am not entirely averse to paying for others. I too, am glad to see Diigo continue and not to the way of Bloglines as Chris Nansen tweeted.
I too will be staying with Diigo. The education account has everything I need and more. However I will consider paying for the premium account. I look at it like taxes. If I want good services, I have to support those services to keep them running and able to finance research and upgrades. Even though I won’t use a lot of the premium services, I just might pay. In the long run paying $40/year isn’t going to break the bank (though it will put a damper on my starbucks habit) and it’ll keep Diigo alive and well.
Hi, my name is Megan Rymell and I was assigned your blog for my edm310 class. What is a diigo? I have never heard of this before. I believe that all blogging sites should be free especially the ones set up for education. It will give teachers a chance to interact with one another and learn from each other.
Wes,
Perhaps you should consider completely revising this post. Unless one scrolls to the comments, they will not see that many of your arguments were proven wrong. I believe this post is misleading. I too was concerned when I read Miguel’s original post on this, but after further investigation realized it was incorrect. Many people will read the headline and skim your post and move away from a tool that still is viable for most educators and students. Thanks for your consideration!
I added a “revision” at the start of the post to let people know about my corrected perceptions and the availability of free, unlimited bookmarking.
Thanks for everyone’s open feedback. Your inputs are important and we are actively listening, as always!
In a few days, we will introduce some changes that will incorporate a lot of your inputs. We will also share some open thought to let folks understand us better. Some great new features will also be introduced. So, stay tuned!
Meanwhile, do check into our blog and look for more updates in the future. Thanks
Sincerely,
The Diigo Team
I think that just by scrolling through the comments and by reading the responses I learned more about Diigo then I had ever known before. I never knew what Diigo actually did until reading this post and the comments following. Thanks you to everyone that responded to the post which helped me for using the Diigo application
I think that just by scrolling through the comments and by reading the responses I learned more about Diigo then I had ever known before. I never knew what Diigo actually did until reading this post and the comments following. Thanks you to everyone that responded to the post which helped me for using the Diigo application.
Glad to read that Diigo, like the other web-based tools that are going for a price now, are still either free or very inexpensive for educators. Online companies do have to pay their bill, pay their employess, pay maintance fees, etc. These companies need to keep programers working on thier tools to make them constistenly work, be available, run smoothly, etc. I am just proud that for educational purposes they are giving the teachers a break on the costs. Things for education should be free or extremely inexpensive.
Thanks for the heads up. I will check out the educator version for this but I will not pay for it. Unfortunately I spend enough money out of pocket on my classes and would not pay for this if it wasn’t free. I also use Diigo and Delicious because I find it easier to search for my bookmarks on Delicious.
I am a HUGE Diigo user and will be paying for the premium service soon.
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