We’ve all done it.  Found an amazing piece of content on the web, only to bookmark and then forget what we called it.  Copy and pasted the URL in an e-mail to send a friend, then lost the trail of the discussion in our overflowing e-mail box.

While content may be king on the social web, trying to keep track of it all and sharing with friends is no easy task.  As I’m writing this article, I just remembered something a friend e-mailed me that I want to include, and now I have to scroll through all the names in my e-mail to see if I can find it (hopefully hasn’t been deleted already, or relegated to my “Old Mail” box).

Which is why I’m trying to get everyone I know to start using the new Firefox add-on from Grouptivity.

To start, let’s look at the numbers.  In a recent study conducted by social scientist and viral marketing guru Dan Zarrella, he found that 80% of the people he surveyed use e-mail as their primary method of sharing content found on the web.  Surprisingly, this was evenly distributed across the board, from what he calls “High Reach Individual Sharers” to the average user.  So while there’s an increase in content sharing in individual social networks, the primary language of shared content continues to be e-mail.

But what if you could have the best of all worlds?  E-mail a friend direct from your browser, post to your favorite social networks like Facebook, Myspace and Delicious, and save the content in a folder that you can categorize when you bookmark, or search later using keywords.

Sounds perfect.  Additional and appreciated features include the ability to upload your e-mail addresses from all your address books like AOL and Gmail, and you can receive a notification when your friend opens your e-mail (now you’ll know if they really read that low-fat curry vegan recipe).

After all, the best web search engine is your own personal network of friends.