Sharing information via the web is enabled by more than just
blogging tools. There are a whole
host of tools that are making publishing, searching, bookmarking, archiving content and annotating the web a
social pastime.

Clay mentions that the social bookmarking idea isn’t new, but is definitely worth revisiting:  

I’m fascinated with the way that a bunch of old ideas floating around from the dot com era are back, and now
succeeding. Many of these apps are explicitly social, and are benefitting from the larger user population and
increased comfort…

Amen!

Like Clay, the only tool from this group that I heartily recommend is
del.icio.us.  It is also the only one that I use regularly. 

Clay mentions BackFlip as the predecessor of all of these
tools.  But, I’d go as far as saying that directories (e.g. yahoo,
dmoz, zeal) are the earliest predecessors. Now
that storage costs are lower, there is no reason to limit the number of editors, though. Thus, anyone can be an
editor and annotator of the web.

Group Publishing

Wikis are very popular. Unlike blogging, though, multiple authors can edit each other’s words,
unrestrained. Since wikis allow multiple authors and group editing, they make collective- centralized-knowledge
creation happen. Because of its centralized location and common goal of creating an authoritative source, wikis make
information from multiple authors  much more digestable than navigating weblogs.

The best known example of a wiki is wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. And
the best known vendor of this software is
Ross Mayfield’s
company, socialtext.

Via Joi Ito,
Stephanie Booth
writes about how wikis can be used for real time conference note taking…

Still in the “team theme”, different roles can be taken by the note-takers: sometimes there is a main note-taker
(I noticed this had a tendancy to happen when people wrote long sentences, but there might be other factors – any
theories on this welcome), sometimes a few people “share” the main note-taking. Some people will correct typos, and
rearrange formatting, adding titles, indenting, adding outside links. Some people add personal comments, notes,
questions. Others try to round up more participants or spend half a talk fighting with wiki pages.

Social Bookmarking

Del.icio.us rocks.  It is my main bookmarking tool. Users can
share their bookmarks publicly on the web; use a javascript
bookmarklet tool to bookmark a page in one click, categorize bookmarks under multiple categories and type their
own short description for the bookmark. All these features make backflip look
like DOS.

Archiving tools

Spurl vs Furl.  Not sure what came first,
but there aren’t a lot of differences between these two. There are some differences in implementation: Furl has a
toolbar and spurl uses a browser button for MS IE users.  After a quick trial, I’d say furl gets a better
rating on usability. But, I’ve talked with the founder of Spurl, and he is definitely on the right track. And
both of these tools allow people to archive single pages of content. So, instead of just storing the link to it, you
can store the page. Like I said, I don’t use these tools.  Does anyone?  For what purpose?

Annotation Tools

src="http://www.weblogsinc.com/common/images/5449124134623213.GIF?0.4721717437517514" width="216" align="right"
vspace="4" border="1" />Gibeo is the only example of web-annotation tools that I
know exists. Gibeo brings the wiki to the world-wide-web. The screen-capture on the left shows how users can
hightlight text, and leave a comment for the next Gibeo user to view. Gibeo allows anyone to annotate and share their
thoughts, simply by highlighting text and typing away. When another person visits the page, they can view what the
other 3rd parties have said. I imagine this’d be ideal for teams of web designers or web developers working on a
project. Instead of using a fancy bug tracking tool. Just annotate the page. And the person responsible can simply go
to the page and address the issue. 
(The annotated page was found
here.)

What other uses could this tool have?

Social Searching

Eurekster brings us social searching. It enables us to share our
searches with different groups of people.  It combines
realcontact’s contact management system with technology that remembers our
searches and what we found interesting. And then, when one of our contacts searches about a certain topic, the
previously clicked-on results are presented at the top. For more info on eurekster, read a
blog I started when eurekster launched, or join the
social software
group I started on Eurekster.

Eurekster’s site is certainly not as popular as “We
Three Kings Search Engine
Providers”, but with partnerships with major social networking sites, like their
partnership with friendster, they are
certainly a search provider to watch.