Diigo V4 goes live

Diigo V4 is here!

Diigo is a web-based bookmarking and annotation service.  I've written about it before.  It's the service I prefer over all the other free and comparable services because it seems to have just the right mix of functionality and usability for me.

One thing I have complained about in the past was the look and feel of the site, which seemed clumsy, especially when compared to what I think is the most well-designed bookmarking service: Delicious.

Well, someone was listening to me, I guess, because Diigo just announced version 4 of their site.  And the key piece of the upgrade is a new and very much more polished look and feel.  Indeed, the layout of the page is quite similar to Delicious!  That's okay by me; as far as I know, Delicious hasn't protected its look and feel.  This is just Diigo's recognition of a superior aspect of another product.

Of course there's more to Diigo V4 than just the look and feel.  The other features are:

• web page snapshots on demand;
• improved search;
• improved annotation features (important for Diigo as a collaboration tool);
• a new, more streamlined way to share links and follow the links of individuals and groups;
• highly expanded and refined group-based activities;
• a new meta page structure for summarizing a user's overall activities;
• an iPhone app (pending Apple's approval); and
• a variety of other improvements.

You can read further details at the Diigo blog.

This is a good upgrade, besides providing a new and better service, it's aggressive enough to indicate clearly that Diigo is interested in providing an excellent service, without totally re-inventing the service (which would have alienated some users).  Version 4 a brand new version, so there are probably a few bugs in it, but overall it's A Good Thing.