In recent years, blogs, wikis and social-everything are clearly making the web more and more participatory and interactive. How about going one more step further and turn the ENTIRE web, i.e., every web page in the universe, into a writable and participatory media? How should it be done and what would be the benefits?

The social annotation service introduced by Diigo allows users to add highlights and sticky notes, in situ, on any web page they read. Imagine a giant transparency overlaying on top of all the web pages. Users can write on the transparency as they wish, as private notes or public comments. And they can read public comments on the transparency left by other readers of the same page, and hear their "two cents" and interact with them.

The benefits of Diigo's social annotation service can be seen from several angles. First, it is clearly a useful personal tool, providing a virtual highlighter and pen for users as they browse the web. Second, it is a great collaborative tool as it allows users to easily forward annotated pages and interact on them in groups. Third, it provides a superior social bookmarking service since it can "clips" the highlights and store them with the bookmarks. As a result, you can now do full-text search on "clipped" or highlighted contents only. Finally, it provides a powerful social platform as it connects readers of the similar interests and enables their easy interactions.