What’s Next for Delicious?(blog.delicious.com)
blog.delicious.com
What’s Next for Delicious?
http://blog.delicious.com/blog/2010/12/whats-next-for-delicious.html
98 comments
Sweet, if someone buys it up I may not be forced to use Yahoo ID.
What about Flickr? I wish someone gets them in the package deal. Only then you can retire your ID. Besides I believe both services run a separate from Yahoo login.
Flickr did have a separate login, but it was mandatorily merged a couple of years ago. There was a big uproar about it too.
This blog post claim to be destinate at the users of Delicious but it screams all over it "IF YOU HAVE MONEY AND WANT TO BUY US, PLEASE REACH US BY MAIL". Sad.
Hope, they sell it to Joshu or somebody who really cares
Hope, they sell it to Joshu or somebody who really cares
I wouldn't mind if they sold it to Google. Google wants to be more "social" and their own Google Bookmarks kind of sucks and has been neglected worse than Delicious.
What's so "social" about Delicious? This is a serious question.
You can subscribe to bookmarks from other people (only if you already know their logins) and you can send bookmarks to others (using a weird for:nick meta-tag). Both features seem a bit sketchy by today's standards. This was definitely a breakthrough when Delicious was launched, but nowadays people expect more from a social site.
Not that I care about social features. I didn't miss them in Delicious, and I don't miss them in Pinboard. But it just doesn't sound convincing to brand Delicious as a great social product for Google to acquire.
You can subscribe to bookmarks from other people (only if you already know their logins) and you can send bookmarks to others (using a weird for:nick meta-tag). Both features seem a bit sketchy by today's standards. This was definitely a breakthrough when Delicious was launched, but nowadays people expect more from a social site.
Not that I care about social features. I didn't miss them in Delicious, and I don't miss them in Pinboard. But it just doesn't sound convincing to brand Delicious as a great social product for Google to acquire.
If Google won't run their integrated service, why would they care for Delicious?
Or at least that's what I was thinking before the example of Google Videos and YouTube came to me.
Or at least that's what I was thinking before the example of Google Videos and YouTube came to me.
Well, in theory, delicious would come with its own team of people who are interested in it, just like YouTube would have.
Ideally, del.icio.us would come with this team of people: http://www.petefreitag.com/images/blog/delicious_office.jpg
Haha, wow. Look at those chairs. So frugal!
I wish they would sell it back to @joshu.
Google Chrome has a nice bookmark (and also preference) syncing feature.
Although the purposes somewhat overlap, storing bookmarks in "the cloud" and adding a social feature is fundamentally different from bookmark syncing. And it's a much better approach IMO because it's not tied to endpoint devices/applications for a function that requires a network connection anyway.
But will "someone who really cares" pay what they want?
Putting the entire team of people that knew how to operate it out on the street was perhaps not the best strategy for getting a good price.
Nor was it a particularly clueful way to pre-empt the rumor that "Delicious is shutting down".
[deleted]
Was it the original team that got acquired?
No, it was this team: http://www.petefreitag.com/images/blog/delicious_office.jpg
Off topic, but I love the $1,400 worth of monitors and $1.50 worth of chair at those workstations.
Not sure whether that would send me running if I interviewed there.
Not sure whether that would send me running if I interviewed there.
del.icio.us was a fairly early example of the lean startup.
Is this too little, too late? Why wasn't this blog post made yesterday? Now "Delicious is closing" has pretty much become "truth," even with this damage control. Many have already started trying out alternate services.
Kinda scary how fast this happens...
Kinda scary how fast this happens...
Well, I think the speed was precipitated by the fact that Yahoo had already shut down a legendary property, Geocities. It's easier to believe that they'll do that again with another piece of their tech than it is that they'll do the right thing and either support it or sell it off.
Yeah but nobody really cared about Geocities other than for the novelty, right?
Oh how I wish I could down-vote you. It isn't about the novelty it is about the nostalgia. Taking down Geocities was taking down a large portion of the current Internet's history.
Wow, don't worry looks like somebody else is on the task :) Sorry for being insensitive, I never had a Geocities page myself, so I guess I didn't understand the importance. I thought it was just about Icy Hot Stunnaz and all that.
But regardless, novelty or nostalgia, the point is it's not very utilitarian. I think one can more easily expect a company to rip out things that people want for sentimental reasons, than something somebody currently find useful.
But regardless, novelty or nostalgia, the point is it's not very utilitarian. I think one can more easily expect a company to rip out things that people want for sentimental reasons, than something somebody currently find useful.
Well, that's like saying we should destroy the original tools cavemen made because they aren't of any use to us now. The point of Geocities in current day and age is to show us where we came from, IMO.
My point wasn't about what we should or shouldn't do, it's about what we should expect a company to do. The original point was, "Yahoo is willing to destroy Geocities" -> "Yahoo is willing to destroy Delicious". And my argument is that Geocities and Delicious have a fundamental difference that would probably make people complain harder, and thus make Yahoo think twice.
it's all still there in the bittorrents...
Is all of it there? Thought it was only a portion...
Has that torrent been released? Last I checked it was still forthcoming.
Yes it has. On my phone and so don't have a link to hand, but it is sat downloading on my PC each night.
Can you post a link when you get a chance?
Got stuck in snow and therefore am no longer out all day :)
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5923737/Geocities_-_The_Torr...
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5923737/Geocities_-_The_Torr...
thanks!
It is possible that Delicious was going to be shut down until backlash surfaced and now Y! changing its mind.
That's not the case. Internally, this intent was communicated shortly after the original announcement that leaked. It was just communicated to a smaller group of people, so it apparently didn't leak like the first announcement did.
Bad news always travels faster and further.
Nice, that is extremely quotable. Does it come from something/someone?
I hear similar phrasing pretty often. Can't think of a single origin though.
My favorite version comes from Douglas Adams, though he probably didn't coin the original:
> Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. The Hingefreel people of Arkintoofle Minor did try to build spaceships that were powered by bad news but they didn't work particularly well and were so extremely unwelcome whenever they arrived anywhere that there wasn't really any point in being there.
> Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. The Hingefreel people of Arkintoofle Minor did try to build spaceships that were powered by bad news but they didn't work particularly well and were so extremely unwelcome whenever they arrived anywhere that there wasn't really any point in being there.
Churchill is reported to have said, "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
I blame techcrunch
Tomorrow's headline: "Did TechCrunch Just Kill Delicious?"
Blame it on the a a a a a alcohol
Alternatively, too much too early. Everyone was so quick to jump on the idea it was shutting down with nothing more than a hint that it wasn't going to be with Yahoo! any more.
I'm pretty sure they were planning to shut it down.
Because when you plan to sell part of a company, do you know what you don't do ? - you don't fire all the software engineers that run it.
Do you want to guess what Yahoo did ?
It smells very much like Yahoo came up with this selling idea in the last 24 hours.
Because when you plan to sell part of a company, do you know what you don't do ? - you don't fire all the software engineers that run it.
Do you want to guess what Yahoo did ?
It smells very much like Yahoo came up with this selling idea in the last 24 hours.
I'm not sure what you're suggesting. Yahoo! shouldn't have confirmed that something is happening with Delicious so early?
I'd disagree. As soon as the story hit TechCrunch, they should have said something. Better to know one way or the other than to leave everyone speculate... because they'll assume the worst, as we've just seen.
I'd disagree. As soon as the story hit TechCrunch, they should have said something. Better to know one way or the other than to leave everyone speculate... because they'll assume the worst, as we've just seen.
I mean we shouldn't have all assumed that the leaked slide == Delicious closing down.
The purpose of an all-hands meeting is to disseminate clear information to employees. In this case, Yahoo has done a very mediocre job in making the message clear. They could have told their own employees the clear truth about the future of delicious, but instead they couched it in FUD terms like "sunset".
So one employee in particular didn't arrive at the same conclusion about this leaked slide as the Yahoo PR department intended to convey, and leaked the slide to someone outside of Yahoo. That person also came away with a similar interpretation.
This does still point to one of the key mistakes Yahoo makes - it's inability to communicate clearly with it's own employees. And by masking these communication in PR-speak rather than plain clear English either suggest complete incompetance in communication, or a still unclear roadmap for Yahoo in general.
It was fair to assume "sunset" meant close down. Why would an employee of Yahoo leak a slide if it was clear that delicious would merely be sold, not closed down?
"sunset" in this context is a particularly poor choice of word. It has too many connotations of things going down. They could have said instead they intent to sell delicious - their employees do deserve clear and decisive leadership.
This is very much a leadership failure at Yahoo. They have failed to communicate effectively with the Sunnyvale staff who are still reeling after seeing their colleagues laid off.
Unfortunately, speaking as an ex-Yahoo, this is not new, nor surprising.
So one employee in particular didn't arrive at the same conclusion about this leaked slide as the Yahoo PR department intended to convey, and leaked the slide to someone outside of Yahoo. That person also came away with a similar interpretation.
This does still point to one of the key mistakes Yahoo makes - it's inability to communicate clearly with it's own employees. And by masking these communication in PR-speak rather than plain clear English either suggest complete incompetance in communication, or a still unclear roadmap for Yahoo in general.
It was fair to assume "sunset" meant close down. Why would an employee of Yahoo leak a slide if it was clear that delicious would merely be sold, not closed down?
"sunset" in this context is a particularly poor choice of word. It has too many connotations of things going down. They could have said instead they intent to sell delicious - their employees do deserve clear and decisive leadership.
This is very much a leadership failure at Yahoo. They have failed to communicate effectively with the Sunnyvale staff who are still reeling after seeing their colleagues laid off.
Unfortunately, speaking as an ex-Yahoo, this is not new, nor surprising.
"Sunset" is a very well-understood term in product management and it means "shut down". I am convinced people came away with the right understanding, but the backlash caught Yahoo by surprise, so they are doing damage control.
Google has a big opportunity here. Delicious is one of the best social search products out there. Any real google innovation in social would be boosted by the user data and brand. Not to mention the pr boost from saving them. Much as many on HN and elsewhere are suggesting the viability of alternatives, few of them seem to compare in terms of data and function right now. Not that this couldn't change quickly.
Totally agree that Google should snap it up. If any company needs it, it's Google and passing this opportunity by would be a mistake on their part. Not to mention that Delicious could be sold at a lower price since they've announced that they've been put out and are looking for a company to buy them.
No! We are seeing time and time again that big companies acquiring sites that are not directly relevant to their core businesses leave those acquisitions floundering. Google has the same problems of acquisitions that have just disappeared.
If delicious is to survive and flourish, then the organisation that should run delicious should be an organisation that solely concentrates on running delicious. Perhaps spinning it off as a separate business entity is the right way.
Delicious has stagnated for far too long as it is. So either spin it out into an independent business entity with fresh ideas and initiative, or replace it with a federated platform to allow others to innovate on top of it.
If delicious is to survive and flourish, then the organisation that should run delicious should be an organisation that solely concentrates on running delicious. Perhaps spinning it off as a separate business entity is the right way.
Delicious has stagnated for far too long as it is. So either spin it out into an independent business entity with fresh ideas and initiative, or replace it with a federated platform to allow others to innovate on top of it.
Hmm, Google's core competence is search. As many commenters pointed out yesterday (in the big "Yahoo shutting down Delicious" thread), Delicious is more than a place where people store their bookmarks; it can be used as a kind of alternative search engine as well. So I think it wouldn't be a bad fit. Also, Google has been trying to get "social" right, and this could be a part of the puzzle.
I agree with the sentiment, but I really feel that Delicious gets stronger with integration into a bigger system. Delicious on its own is a great service. Integrated into gmail and google search, using the data to help me find more interesting content, is something that can actually compete with Facebook for mainstream adoption, once they start to roll-out data-driven features more deeply.
edit: personally, a takeover by a passionate team would be much more satisfying then a shutdown, just trying to point out what I see as an opportunity for the big G.
edit: personally, a takeover by a passionate team would be much more satisfying then a shutdown, just trying to point out what I see as an opportunity for the big G.
Yeah, but who's going to come up with the operating capital to get that new entity started? Yahoo doesn't want to spend money on Delicious; that's why they're dumping it. And outside investors aren't going to be eager to put money into a company that's been stagnant for years. Granted, without Yahoo's mismanagement, Delicious might be able to become vibrant again; but "we're not crippled any more" is not exactly a compelling story to tell to investors.
"While we have determined that there is not a strategic fit at Yahoo!, we believe there is a ideal home for Delicious outside of the company where it can be resourced to the level where it can be competitive."
I don't get how notepad, address book, calendar etc are part of yahoo's strategy and bookmarks aren't.
I don't get how notepad, address book, calendar etc are part of yahoo's strategy and bookmarks aren't.
That quote strikes me as incredibly tone deaf. Not just the corporate speak of 'resourced' after laying off the team, but the utter lack of vision they have for the product. Delicious defined a category of webservices (public bookmarking) but to their eyes they aren't 'competitive'.
Yeah it's really terrible. The part about "we have determined that there is not a strategic fit at Yahoo" is laughable. I understand they can't just be honest and say "we don't know how to use it", but the way they phrased it conveys a sort of hubris that a company as poorly run as Yahoo should stay far far away from.
Notepad, Address Book and Calendar are already tightly integrated into My Yahoo, which is what the current Yahoo homepage was originally derived from. Delicious was always an outsider in comparison.
Because of that tight integration, I guess those features are tended to be used by certain coveted audiences of the My Yahoo product - like people monitoring their stock portfolios using My Yahoo. So there's enough of an ad-happy audience using those features to make componentising these features - perhaps as YAP modules - throughout the range of Yahoo sites.
Though, as I understood it, Yahoo notepad hasn't had any tender loving care for years (it was something I was interested in redeveloping during my time at Yahoo). It's not much more than a persistent textarea (unlike the defunct Google notebook that had far richer structure)
Because of that tight integration, I guess those features are tended to be used by certain coveted audiences of the My Yahoo product - like people monitoring their stock portfolios using My Yahoo. So there's enough of an ad-happy audience using those features to make componentising these features - perhaps as YAP modules - throughout the range of Yahoo sites.
Though, as I understood it, Yahoo notepad hasn't had any tender loving care for years (it was something I was interested in redeveloping during my time at Yahoo). It's not much more than a persistent textarea (unlike the defunct Google notebook that had far richer structure)
Maybe these are the next things they're killing.
We should remember that "Yahoo is a content company". http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-is-focused-were-a-conte...
We should remember that "Yahoo is a content company". http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-is-focused-were-a-conte...
"Sorry, Internal Server Error."
Sadly, that's probably what's next for Delicious.
Sadly, that's probably what's next for Delicious.
Yes, I thought this was a (somewhat cruel) joke as well when I got the error…
This is what I saw when I went to this link:
Sorry, Internal Server Error.
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
I thought that was pretty clever by the OP. I assumed that he made up the url 'what's next for delicious' ensuring that it would go to an error page. But then I realized that it really was an error and the blog post had been taken down :(
Sorry, Internal Server Error.
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
I thought that was pretty clever by the OP. I assumed that he made up the url 'what's next for delicious' ensuring that it would go to an error page. But then I realized that it really was an error and the blog post had been taken down :(
I find it very odd that Delicious was not a "strategic fit" at Yahoo!
If I remember right, Yahoo was a bunch of links pointing people to webpages. How is that different from bookmarks?
Citation regarding the history of Yahoo:
Before long they were spending more time on their home-brewed lists of favorite links than on their doctoral dissertations.
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/misc/history.html
If I remember right, Yahoo was a bunch of links pointing people to webpages. How is that different from bookmarks?
Citation regarding the history of Yahoo:
Before long they were spending more time on their home-brewed lists of favorite links than on their doctoral dissertations.
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/misc/history.html
If Yahoo had just put 'Spinout/Sunset' atop that slide naming Del.icio.us, rather than just 'Sunset', a lot of the anguish could have been avoided.
http://blog.delicious.com/
The blog has since only hosted two single web pages (http://blog.delicious.com/index.htm and http://blog.delicious.com/blog/2010/12/whats-next-for-delici...)
I was already not very impressed that they were bought by yahoo years ago, as I thought that yahoo! is not the right place to host (I used http://del.icio.us, with the dots, since 2005). I was and am also a pro user of http://flickr.com and wonder if my huge collection there would be wiped clean in 2011.
Panic spreading.
Just a side note, I hate the "from yahoo!" part of the logo (on both sites). Well, they should have done that much earlier, and I hope that some companies with big muscles could save them. I really don't want to switch boat.
The blog has since only hosted two single web pages (http://blog.delicious.com/index.htm and http://blog.delicious.com/blog/2010/12/whats-next-for-delici...)
I was already not very impressed that they were bought by yahoo years ago, as I thought that yahoo! is not the right place to host (I used http://del.icio.us, with the dots, since 2005). I was and am also a pro user of http://flickr.com and wonder if my huge collection there would be wiped clean in 2011.
Panic spreading.
Just a side note, I hate the "from yahoo!" part of the logo (on both sites). Well, they should have done that much earlier, and I hope that some companies with big muscles could save them. I really don't want to switch boat.
Note that they've pulled down all the other delicious blog posts; the source for this page still has a "previous" link in the source to 'http://blog.delicious.com/blog/2010/12/tags-return-to-the-bo..., but it's gone, as are the rss and atom feeds, etc.
The static page was put up to handle the massive load hitting the blog.
Yahoo has been lacking any major "must have" products in the past what, 10 years?
Here is a list of everything they offer: http://everything.yahoo.com/
Delicious was about the only thing that the 'tech' crowd uses. Think about the people you know who might use Yahoo! Mail or Answers. It is the decidedly less-tech people who use these products, mainly as a throwback to the Yahoo! of 2000. Of course, Yahoo!'s goal isn't to cater to tech people, but people who click on ads. I imagine their revenue is declining for even those main-stream products, but for them to cut out the more tech oriented services which actually have a chance in the future to really get 'big', is just delaying their demise a year or 2.
Here is a list of everything they offer: http://everything.yahoo.com/
Delicious was about the only thing that the 'tech' crowd uses. Think about the people you know who might use Yahoo! Mail or Answers. It is the decidedly less-tech people who use these products, mainly as a throwback to the Yahoo! of 2000. Of course, Yahoo!'s goal isn't to cater to tech people, but people who click on ads. I imagine their revenue is declining for even those main-stream products, but for them to cut out the more tech oriented services which actually have a chance in the future to really get 'big', is just delaying their demise a year or 2.
Yahoo has been lacking any major "must have" products in the past what, 10 years?
That's not quite true. They have a pretty good fantasy hockey pool.
That's not quite true. They have a pretty good fantasy hockey pool.
I agree, Yahoo! Fantasy Sports are pretty solid.
Flickr?
That would be interesting! But no, http://hockey.fantasysports.yahoo.com/
Yeah, I pretty happily pay for Flickr. I like it better than Picassa but stuff like this sure makes me nervous.
Why would they do a press release, before selling it? I dont remember anyone ever putting a "For Sale" board, for a software property of Delicious' scale.
It is just they are covering up for the bad press, IMO.
It is just they are covering up for the bad press, IMO.
It's up on the dev blog:
http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/posts/2010/12/whats-nex...
http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/posts/2010/12/whats-nex...
Just in case:
http://savedelicious.pommepause.com/
(collaborative crawling of Delicious using a Chrome extension)
If I were in negotiations with Yahoo to buy one of their properties (and I were more nefarious), I'd have leaked a story like this to reduce the sales price.
Anyone know a good alternative to Delicious?
diigo.com been using it for a couple of years now.
What’s Next for Delicious?
Many of you have read the news stories about Delicious that began appearing yesterday. We’re genuinely sorry to have these stories appear with so little context for our loyal users. While we can’t answer each of your questions individually, we wanted to address what we can at this stage and we promise to keep you posted as future plans get finalized.
Is Delicious being shut down? And should I be worried about my data?
- No, we are not shutting down Delicious. While we have determined that there is not a strategic fit at Yahoo!, we believe there is a ideal home for Delicious outside of the company where it can be resourced to the level where it can be competitive.
What is Yahoo! going to do with Delicious?
- We’re actively thinking about the future of Delicious and we believe there is a home outside the company that would make more sense for the service and our users. We’re in the process of exploring a variety of options and talking to companies right now. And we’ll share our plans with you as soon as we can.
What if I want to get my bookmarks out of Delicious right away?
- As noted above, there’s no reason to panic. We are maintaining Delicious and encourage you to keep using it. That said, we have export options if you so choose. Additionally, many services provide the ability to import Delicious links and tags. We can only imagine how upsetting the news coverage over the past 24 hours has been to many of you. Speaking for our team, we were very disappointed by the way that this appeared in the press. We’ll let you know more as things develop.