It looks like Clay Shirky beat me to this, but I swear I started composing this one the other day.

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
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.