Dear Diigo Users,
We are excited to release the capability to annotate PDF files, a feature that has been among the most requested for a long time. The reason that it has taken us so long to release this feature is that PDF is a proprietary standard and very challenging to work with, especially within browsers. But with enough dedication to the problem by our team, we are happy to finally take it out of beta.
Another problem that we have been struggling for a long time is spam – spammers have been very aggressive and crafty on our site, harassing users and importing junky content. Spammers are costing us lots of resources not only in hardware, but also in manpower as we spent time developing anti-spam techniques and manually policing the site. We have decided to take a different approach to this problem by limiting the social privileges of free users. We now require captcha on many social features, such as following people, joining groups, etc. For a very nominal fee, you can upgrade yourself to “Social Membership,” which would grant you full social features without capcha, plus a lot of other goodies. We expect to stop the vast majority of the spammers with this simple measure.
We’d like to elaborate more about Social Membership and its pricing and our thoughts behind the decisions. As long-time Diigo users know, Diigo is a personal knowledge management tool on the one hand, and a knowledge-sharing community on the other hand. While it is perfectly fine to use Diigo solely as the former, we do believe that the value of the knowledge-sharing community could be substantial, as the number of active users increases, and as the spam is minimized. As a result, we have decided to set the social membership annual fee at $5/year on Oct 1, 2014, and will increase the price gradually thereafter according to a pre-determined formula, as the number of active social members increases. To reward existing users, an attractive promotion price of $2/year will be available until Oct. 1, 2014. For future years, you will continue to pay the low annual price you paid in the first year, as long as your credit card stay valid for automatic renewal.
We have also taken this opportunity to re-adjust our pricing plan to better align users needs with our business model. Existing basic and premium users will be automatically upgraded to Standard in the new pricing plan.
We believe that it is paramount for both the Diigo team and Diigo users that Diigo has a viable financial model so it can continue to have the resources necessary to get better and better, and be around for 100 years or so 🙂 In the last few months, several products that sort of compete with Diigo, such as Springpad, Kippt, etc, have either announced shut-down or were put on hold. Diigo is in a better shape than these companies, thanks to your support, and we hope you will continue to show your support and help Diigo improve and flourish!
With these exciting developments, we feel ready to declare the arrival of Diigo 6.0. Although version number does not mean a whole lot with internet products like Diigo that are being continuously improved, we are still happy to use it as a reminder of the long journey we have been through and the exciting improvements to come.
Our team always sees our users as a partner in getting the product right, and we appreciate and look forward to your feedback and continued involvement.
Diigo 
@ “The reason that it has taken us so long to release this feature is that PDF is a proprietary standard …”
Error. PDF used to be proprietary but was adopted as a free and open international standard by ISO/IEC in 2008. Concurrently, Adobe published a Public Patent License to ISO 32000-1 granting royalty-free rights for all patents owned by Adobe that are necessary to make, use, sell and distribute PDF compliant implementations. Adobe publishes a lot of supplemental documentation for that standard that is copyrighted by Adobe. Perhaps that is what led you to believe the specification was still proprietary?
can’t wait ! 🙂 great job
What about existing Diigo groups?
According to https://www.diigo.com/premium/pricing_table_details , in order to have more than 1 public group, the professional plan at $6/month, $59/year, must be chosen, and there are 0 groups (private or public) for the free plan.
Could you please clarify what will happen to existing groups that aren’t covered by any paying plan after October 1, 2014? Should you choose to delete them, will you send their members a notification?
Thank you in advance.
claude, existing groups can still operate.
Diigo’s UI could use a lot of improvements over new features.
1. You need a consistent sidebar which contains both lists and tags. I would rather get rid of list and rebrand them as notebook more in like with Evernote. If I want to access to my tags or list why force users to jump hoofs and click several times to reach them. A consistent sidebar with both notebooks and tags with slider if list is long would solve the problem.
2. You should treat everything as a note. There is no point in separating content into bookmarks, image, pdf, and notes.
3. Everything should be private by default.
4. You should cache/save the whole article by default. So I have that information in my Diigo forever. I will not have to worry about page being dead.
5. You should preserve html/css style when saving selected item from webpages.
6. For love of god please do not redirect me to Diigo homepage when I click Diigo. I have no interest in going to Diigo page. Let me stay in Library.
Sudhir,
Thanks for your thoughtful input.
1-2: We will have something even better coming up.
3: an option setting is already available on the browser extensions, and should soon available as an account setting
4, already available, under premium service plans
5. for pages you want to be better preserved, you can upload through the browser extensions.
6. you mean when you are logged in? but then “My library” should be prominently available for you to access.
you may be right, but PDF is still not easy to work with, especially within browsers.
Note that some banks change card number when it is reissued, at least here in Poland. I use a few cards and no one of them kept it’s number for more than 3 years… And it is good thing from the security standpoint.
Cheaper price preserved as long as deal is not broken is reasonable. Using card no as continuity marker is not.
@wade
5. I always use the extension. Here is how StackOverflow looks in Diigo http://i.imgur.com/jn4mdU9.png The coding style like white spaces and colors should have been maintained in Diigo.
6. When I am in Diigo, logged in, there is Diigo logo and Library logo on the top bar. Diigo logo takes me to Diigo homepage. I see no reason for me to go to Diigo webpage. Usually a product logo takes you to home and home in this case should be my library and not Diigo’s webpage.
sudhir, if you do that, users who want to access the homepage for whatever reason will not be able to, which can be disorienting and confusing.
https://www.diigo.com/premium/pricing_table_details
You really want to say “help to ENSURE Diigo will be aruond for 100 years”. Insure is for insurance. 🙂
(And it’s impossible to comment on spelling without making a typo or spelling mistake – heh!)
@wade They can alway go diigo.com and you should think about how often and why users have to leave My library and go to diigo.com. I rest my case. Thanks for commenting.
sudhirm, when you are logged in, diigo.com takes you to “my library”, instead of the homepage.
Wade,
Clicking on Diigo.com logo, irrespective of if I am logged in or not, alawys takes me to the Diigo.com homepage.
Sudhir.
I noticed that the new pricing plan limits teachers to 3 groups. How can teachers function with that limitation? We usually have 4-6 class periods, and one of the benefits of the groups is creating sub-groups within the classrooms.
Is it now necessary (or even possible) to have both a teacher and professional account (the professional account alone doesn’t include the teacher console)?
Devin
Sudhir, click on the ‘My Library’ button 100px to the right of the logo. Is this so hard?
The logo of a website linking to the homepage is virtually a standard of the Internet.
I couldn’t imagine how would you achive pdf annotations but now when I’m trying it my mind is completely blown! You guys are geniuses! Own pdf reader – brilliant! And it’s better than chrome’s which I thought is nearly impossible – e.g. thumbnails & contents are great additions (not to mention that I can freakin’ annotate pdfs in my browser!!!!!). You guys ROCK!!
Your slightly over-enthusiastic fanboy ;))
We are waiting for more response from teachers and will evaluate it. It’s possible to have both professional account and teacher console.
claude, existing groups can still operate. i ,like this
HOW DO I TURN OFF THE PDF ANNOTATE FEATURE??????
I don’t want it to switch from viewing the PDF into Annotate unless I explicitly ask to do that. Right now its blocking me from doing normal DIIGO bookmarking of pdf web pages.
And finally, I use the Firefox Diigo Toolbar as a replacement for the Firefox Bookmarks Toolbar in the Toolbar section at the top of my browser. The Firefox Diigo Toolbar looks good right below it, however I could like to totally eliminate the Firefox Bookmarks Toolbar if the Firefox Diigo Toolbar’s filters allowed you to view all the bookmarks in your selected filters instead of just up to a limited amount. Could you please remove this restriction? Thank you.
is pdf annotation not available for free users? i was able to use it on first day of launch. Today it says i cant. Please let me know how i can access it
I have a “social” membership with “unlimited social privileges.” What are “social privileges”? Also, how will current users be charged when their accounts are automatically upgraded to “standard”? I am a current user as of today (-: Will I be a current user for the purposes of automatically being upgraded to a “standard” account, which I assume is being done on October 1, 2014?
Please make everything private by default. This is a key issue among users. Please listen to our feedback.
I have a free account now. Can I continue to have a free account after 1 October? Is Diigo discontinuing all free accounts? If that is correct, please state it explicitly. Thank you!
I second Mekk’s comments about credit card numbers changing every time the card expires. Please don’t kick us out because we provide a new card number! As long as we keep paying for the account, we should be allowed to keep the same price, right?
Thanks for your awesome web tool!
As a loyalty user, I would like to suggest for two major features to be improved:
1. Allow users to sort bookmarks by name (beside date updated, date created)
2. Edit bookmarks direct in Diigo sidebar and Firefox Diigo Toolbar (add tag, remove tag, delete bookmarks,…)
Thanks for your thoughtful Diigo blog.
As a loyalty user, I would like to suggest for two major features to be improved:
1. Allow users to sort bookmarks by name (beside date updated, date created)
2. Edit bookmarks direct in Diigo sidebar and Firefox Diigo Toolbar (add tag, remove tag, delete bookmarks,…)
Looks good 🙂
I love Diigo and appreciate the new improvements. You have definitely improved my memory of of sites visited. I hope that someone else has benefitted.
As for you new developments. I often annotate pdfs on my computer so I’ll be interested to see if it is useful within the site.
Truisms: Development costs money – development is a moving target – users will never be satisfied…
I appreciate your efforts! Thanks!
thanks ask this information
nice one
Great One