Diigo is over-engineered, WebNotes is simple and dull. This is just to state, from the start, that I am not taking sides. I am simply reviewing two somewhat similar tools, both potentially effective for PR use.
At the end of a public relations campaign a customer expects reports. Expensive software is already available to generate these reports automatically: see VOCUS and other online brand monitoring products. But boutique PR companies, and freelance PRs often prefer to generate these reports manually, because they simply cannot afford the price. They use free online monitoring tools like Google Alerts, and visit each site, then they make lists of titles, links and content snippets to generate a viable report. All the “copy-paste” effort is time consuming, and clients definitely don’t like to pay for someone’s inability to work efficiently.
Tools like WebNotes and Diigo can be used to simplify the reporting process.
WebNotes – Make PDFs out of Annotations
There is no other use I see for WebNotes than generating PDFs out of bookmarks and highlights.
With WebNotes you can organize annotations in folders - click on image to enlarge.
I was playing a little with this application today: I made a collection of sites (WebNotes pdf) reporting about KIDO’Z. The report can also be generated as HTML, which is a very interesting feature if you plan to include such lists on a blog or a webpage for example, (but you can only use it if you don’t care about W3C standards – the code generated by WebNotes does not validate).
Overall, WebNotes performed well, with a few exceptions where it couldn’t annotate and gave an error message like “please refresh the page and try again.” After the refresh it still didn’t work, but this could be generated by an error in the code of the page I was trying to annotate.
Annotations on Flickr doen't work either, remote server problems this time - click on the image to enlarge.
At the end of the test I concluded that WebNotes is nothing but a handy solution for those who are too lazy to copy something from the Web, paste it into Word or other editor and generate a PDF. The definition for WebNotes, as first stated, is not “simple and effective” but “simple and dull.”
What is worse is that, according to a late press release, WebNotes plans to charge people for their services, no more and no less than 9,99 USD/month. This is way more than in-depth analytics like Pmetrics for example. So, while I see some time-saving value in using this service, this is something I would definitely not pay for.
Diigo – Make Annotations Shareable Content
Diigo, on the other hand, has pretty similar features, with the only difference that it doesn’t allow the users to generate PDF reports (but I don’t worry: Diigo could, at any time, add this feature, which will definitely put WebNotes out of business).
The possibility of organizing notes, bookmarks and annotations in “folders” is not there either, however the possibility of organizing based on tags and lists is present.
Diigo is far more advanced, and for a PR professional a much better tool, once you “learn” the system. As I said, Diigo is over-engineered, and almost impossible to use at full potential by those less Web savvy. The annotation process is as easy as with WebNotes, if not easier.
Diigo’s Diigolet – a simple drag-and-drop solution, is less obtrusive than a standard toolbar and as effective.
Diigolet is just one of the options Diigo offers for annotating - click to enlarge.
The beauty of the service is that, aside being an annotation tool, it is also a social network, with multiple possibilities of “interacting” with other users. Sharing bookmarks and annotations is the whole purpose of the social game, and obviously a “share by email” option is not enough.
With Diigo you can share content with all the friends in your network - click to enlarge.
With Diigo you can connect with people in multiple ways: invite them to add you as a friend, send them messages, invite them to join a group, or simply add them to your watchlist. Anyone who knows anything about the web and social networking will want to be able to “blog this” or share it with friends and groups, on site or on social networks elsewhere (FaceBook, Twitter, etc).
Diigo’s functionality doesn’t stop here. All the “sticky notes” can be made public, private or shared with a group. For each sticky note there is an “add comment” possibility that will enable other users to start a conversation.
Use Diigo's sticky notes to start a conversation - click on the image to enlarge.
The research gets easier because Diigo makes all annotations in the network searchable: you can find the most popular bookmarks on any subject. Based on your bookmarks Diigo is also recommending content and while you are reading a web page, the Diigo sidebar shows who else has bookmarked that page or that site, and what other similar pages and sites they have bookmarked, giving you a great way to find related content.
You see, I understand anyone’s need to monetize, and I am fully supportive when it comes to quality services. In my view, WebNotes is releasing a Pro version too soon, and based on wind. The PDF reports are not so difficult to implement, and anyone from Diigo to UberNote, MyStickies, Stickis, SharedCopy and Fleck, could offer something similar, free of charge, sooner than WebNotes can make a sticky.
As PR people we represent lots and lots of clients, but our jobs should not be restricted to publishing press releases. We are advisers, above everything else. We should never allow a customer to publish a press release with potential negative impact. WebNotes’ PR obviously did not advise properly in this situation: launching a Pro service without a solid base can only be detrimental. Neglecting to incorporate the obvious PR value of using such a service is either oversight or limited view of possibilities for such an application. Also, offering a 50% discount for something that can be done manually by any elementary school PC savvy user is a bitter joke. I hope WebNotes will add some value to this product soon, or lower the price for Pete’s sake! I think 25 USD per year is a fair start.
About Mihaela Lica Butler
@Graham – thank you very much for this. As I said, I was not testing that feature, I was only testing the feature that web annotation feature (and particularly the “convert to PDF” feature), because it interests me as a PR person. Today however I tested WebNotes’ PDF viewer and discovered the same issues, plus the one exhibited above (screenshot).
So I did it, Alex, I tested it. As I said, you monetize too soon. It is buggy. Look at this screenshot (click to enlarge):
Alex, as far as I am concerned, there is no confusion. As I said, I didn’t test the PDF feature, because I am sincerely not interested in it and I fail to see why anyone would be so excited about it. But now that you pointed that out, I would like to tell you that this message:
is a mood breaker anyway.
So I go pass the message, I interrupt everything else I am doing, to install Adobe Flash Player. This will ask me to restart Firefox, so see you in a bit, when I will tell you what I think.
Via http://www.webnotes.net/Product/WebNotesPro.aspx I experimented with WebNotes’ PDF viewer.
Initial concerns:
• the PDF is copied
• the copy is converted from PDF
• the conversion is represented in Flash
• the WebNotes copy/representation does not refer to the URL of original
• workflow: the WebNotes user’s annotations can not be saved (converted) to PDF, so merger with annotations on the original PDF may be impossible
• attribution: unless I’m missing something, there’s no way to distinguish between annotations of multiple users.
@Phil,
I think there’s some general confusion going on. The premium feature is the ability to annotate (ie. highlight and add notes to) online PDFs. All of our interviews with librarians, universities and professors indicated that marking up PDFs was a hugely desired feature.
Generating PDF reports is still free, however.
Hopefully this clears everything up!
I have used Diigo a little bit, but have never tested Webnotes. However, I am a programmer and developer and cannot envision a year of development to make an app generate a PDF no matter how complex the interaction between annotations and distribution. As the author mentioned, a development as refined (and as she mentioned, over engineered) as Diigo , could likely do this in weeks if not days. It is a nice compliment to either platform, but not rocket science after all. One year? Was the janitor working nights?
My email is not a secret, Alex: mig@pamil-visions.com
BTW, I re-read Phil’s article now, and noted that he actually said the same thing: monetizing now is too soon. Well, I’ll let him answer better.
@Mihaela
Perfect! Well as we make modifications and iterate new features, I’d love to get your feedback. Would that be okay by you? I can probably get your email from Phil if you don’t mind.
Regards,
Alex
Alex,
I did do a pretty thorough review of WebNotes for Sitepoint. I have since talked with Ryan any number of times about the development, and to be honest, actually reiterated that monetizing like this was too soon, and for the wrong feature. Webnotes has great potential as I said in the article, but beside Diigo it is not there yet. In my opinion, and I did not go this far int eh article on SitePoint, it is actually a copy of Diigo and some others to an extent. This in itself is not a bad thing, as emulation is the most sincere form of flattery as we all know.
Given what I have seen developmentally these last few years, I fully expected “ALL” my suggestion in the article, and when asked by Ryan, to be taken more seriously. Making mistakes in an early startup, especially when the competition and economic climate are bitter, is not as easily forgiven as it was 3 years ago. For my feedback, if I were going to release a premium feature like this, it would not only be able to spit out a PDF, but be integrated into a PowerPoint, added to a blog in editorial form, organized via drag and drop as I mentioned in the StiePoint article, and essentially performed like a WP editor combined with MS Word. Something along those lines any way.
This is what I had to say about what I called “a marginal” research tool, speaking of WebNotes:
I expected WebNotes to succeed where Diigo has failed to a degree Alex. By focusing on the research aspects, including publication, organization and distribution, I thought any annotation tool could garner a market. Diigo, regardless of how well it is done, has not done this yet either. I have not seen the new premium version, but I was actually going to ask Ryan to let me test it for this release. Given what Mihaela has outlined, and I trust here assessments more than my own most of the time, you guys probably should have made this version of the premium feature free.
Many people think my criticisms are meant to downgrade their developments, but this is simply not true. Look at it this way Alex, if everyone in the Tech world praised WebNotes for making cool PDF’s, when you obviously have the capability to make something far more advanced, what would that benefit? Take this sucker back to the drawing board and wow someone guys. In the mean time, if you guys will send me access (if I do not already have it in my inbox), I will write a review and put it on a notable blog for all to see. Beyond that, I cannot be more fair. Make no mistake though, if it is mediocre, I will say it.
BTW @ Mig, I am astonished that you failed to read my article on SitePoint before just now :( This was a nice one I READ of yours.
Always,
Phil
PS for Alex: as for Phil’s article… we obviously have different views.
@Alex,
I obviously have a free account with WebNotes already – hence the review. :) I never review anything without proper testing.
Do our clients need in-depth reports? They always do, and learning which site is the most popular is actually the most important part of the report. Customers need to know when popular media covers the news – I bet you need to know that too. Also, after a PR campaign, customers also need to know where are the most comments, to learn what the users have to say about their products/services, etc.
You could turn WebNotes in a great tool with a little effort, I am sure.
As for Adobe, any serious corporation does pay the price. True that there is no social networking ability with it, but we always have the “send email” option by default on our PCs. And if we want to go social, we’ll just use Secondbrain or any other service that allows free PDF uploads.
Trust me, if you make something worth the money, I will not be too shy to pay. ;)
I`m not terribly familiar with either of these applications, but it does seem that Diigo would be the more useful of the two.
Mihaela,
Thanks for responding! For your purposes, I’d recommend using the free version of WebNotes. It doesn’t include the PDF annotation capabilities, but it does include everything you mentioned in your article. Your partner Phil actually wrote about this version when he covered us at SitePoint: http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/01/23/sticky-simple/
Adobe certainly does allow annotations, but this version costs several hundred dollars, and doesn’t allow for the report creation or sharing features which you mention in your article. Nor does it store your annotations in the cloud to be accessed from anywhere. That’s why many of our customers ended up purchasing the Pro version of WebNotes.
I’d be very interested in learning more about how these social features you requested help your clients. We are always trying to learn how to make WebNotes better, and obviously we are still young and growing! Do your clients frequently ask for your reports to be ordered by page rank or popularity? This could be an interesting feature to implement!
Thanks again for your feedback.
Alex, I actually read the case studies and of course, they do make sense. You are right about copying and pasting in Word – it is time consuming, I acknowledge that, but the point is: the service is overpriced in its actual state. I didn’t test the actual PDF annotation feature because I was only interested in web annotations and notes and also because, to be honest, I don’t see the point. I can already make notes with Adobe PDF.
I can see value for WebNotes if you would add a “blog this” to allow users create lists of resources automatically for example. It could serve for someone publishing such a list: http://www.onlineuniversitylowdown.com/2007/08/100-best-twitter-tools-for-marketeers.html
I can see value if you offer some sort of interactivity, or if the annotations, once ordered in a file, are also ordered according to site popularity, page rank, etc. There are many things that could make the product worth the price, but these are simply not there yet.
Mihaela,
Thanks for writing up about WebNotes! We appreciate your constructive criticism, though I was curious if you might like to discuss further?
WebNotes has a free version as well which can do all of the features you mention, but our Pro version allows you to annotate PDF documents just as you would a web page, a feature that not even Diigo can match. This unique technology, took over a year to develop and is unparalleled in its quality.
Also, you say that WebNotes is only for people too lazy to copy and paste, but our case studies have shown that copying and pasting into Word is exceptionally inefficient. Take a look here to see how our users saved between 30-75% of their time (including a marketing firm). http://www.webnotes.net/Press/CaseStudies.aspx
I’d love to hear your thoughts, so shoot me an email if you are interested.
Alex