Zigtag is a new bookmarking service that is currently in private beta (you can sign up for a invite though). Zigtag utilizes a sidebar for tagging and sharing. Currently only Firefox is supported, however I am told that Internet Explorer support is coming soon.

Zigtag combines bookmarking and social networking into on site. While similar to del.icio.us and StumbleUpon, zigtag takes an entirely different approach.

From the zigtag website

Zigtag is an intelligent social bookmarking tool. It allows you to save your favorite websites by tagging them with keywords, which you can then use to retrieve the pages again at a later date. This makes it easy to categorize and organize any number of bookmarks, and is more manageable than your browser's built-in favorites tool.

The social aspect of Zigtag is that you can search not only your own bookmarks but also those of your friends or the entire Zigtag community, and you can share your own favorites with others if you choose. You can also create and join groups which are dedicated to sharing content about various subjects, allowing you to constantly discover new pages that are interesting and relevant to you.

The intelligence aspect is that our tags have defined meanings, so when you tag a page, you are assigning it a definition rather than a simple word that could have multiple meanings. Having defined tags is what sets Zigtag apart from other social bookmarking web sites.

The primary difference between Zigtag and other social bookmarking websites is that our tags have defined meanings. This makes the system very intelligent in a number of ways.

First, it solves the tag selection problem, which arises when there are multiple ways to express the same idea. Suppose you want to tag a page about New York City–what word(s) should you use? A number of options are available, such as "New York", "New York City", "NYC" or even "The Big Apple". Different people will choose different tags, and even the same person may choose different tags at a different time. In a traditional social bookmarking tool, all these tags would be unrelated and there would be no simple way to group their pages together, even though they're all describing the exact same thing. The Zigtag system understands that all these tags are describing the same idea, so it doesn't matter which you choose–they are completely equivalent. You can tag a page with NYC, defined as "the city", and retrieve it by searching for New York City, also defined similarly. No other bookmarking tool or search engine offers this capability.

Below are several images depicting zigtag features.

initial welcome screen
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Sidebar installed in Firefox
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member profile
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tagging a website
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explore tags on zigtag profile
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recommended links
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zigtag share items with friends and groups
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I must say zigtag is easy to use and is not overcomplicated. The features, both the sidebar and website, are straightforward and very intuitive.

I can see zigtag becoming very popular as more social web users discover the service. I for one will make good use of the service. I will post more on zigtag as time allows.

If you are into social bookmarking/social networking you will enjoy what zigtag has to offer.

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