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What’s Next for Delicious?
- paul 16y agoI want to make fun of the word "resourced", but can't decide how. Something about lame corporate speak. Now I'm off to resource the dog...
- mambodog 16y agoWell I felt that way about 'evidenced', but that's pretty widely used now, so look forward to resourcing your dog for years to come.
- marcamillion 16y agoThis 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 :(
- comster 16y agoClearly nothing. Just like the past n years they've been around.
- steveklabnik 16y agoIs 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...
- citricsquid 16y agoAlternatively, 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.
- steveklabnik 16y agoI'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.
- citricsquid 16y agoI mean we shouldn't have all assumed that the leaked slide == Delicious closing down.
- Isofarro 16y agoThe 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.
- coliveira 16y ago
- abraham 16y agoIt is possible that Delicious was going to be shut down until backlash surfaced and now Y! changing its mind.
- rgrove 16y agoThat'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.
- abraham 16y agoBad news always travels faster and further.
- Goosey 16y agoNice, that is extremely quotable. Does it come from something/someone?
- abraham 16y agoI hear similar phrasing pretty often. Can't think of a single origin though.
- aquadoctorbob 16y agoMy 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.
- dhugiaskmak 16y ago
- theklub 16y agoI blame techcrunch
- jaybol 16y agoBlame it on the a a a a a alcohol
- revorad 16y agoThat's not fair. HN played a big part too.
- loire280 16y agoWebdev celebs like Zeldman and Gruber helped fan the flames, too, by quickly spreading the news over Twitter. I watched this unfold through my Twitter feed; first I heard of it was a retweet from Zeldman.
- alexophile 16y agoTomorrow's headline: "Did TechCrunch Just Kill Delicious?"
- batasrki 16y agoWell, 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.
- orblivion 16y agoYeah but nobody really cared about Geocities other than for the novelty, right?
- bradendouglass 16y agoOh 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.
- borism 16y agoit's all still there in the bittorrents...
- varworld 16y agoOriginal Text (since blog was down): 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.
- bjonathan 16y agoor Bing cache: http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=http%3a%2f%2fblog.delicious.com%2fblog%2f2010%2f12%2fwhats-next-for-delicious.html&d=549891610871&mkt=fr-FR&setlang=fr-FR&w=8ea25f64,ed76adcb http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=http%3a%2f%2fblog.delicious...
- jdp23 16y ago> Speaking for our team, we were very disappointed by the way that this appeared in the press. Speaking as a user, I am very disappointed not to see the team taking more responsibility for the way Yahoo! is handling this.
- bpm140 16y ago
- bjonathan 16y agoThis 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
- borism 16y agoBut will "someone who really cares" pay what they want?
- naner 16y agoI 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.
- Macha 16y agoIf 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.
- Naga 16y agoWell, in theory, delicious would come with its own team of people who are interested in it, just like YouTube would have.
- varworld 16y ago"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.
- CrLf 16y agoYahoo has a strategy?
- jkaufman 16y agoTheir Strategy Department is found to the right of the Office of Public Relations which is down the hall from their Search Engine HQ and their Research Lab for Unicorn Care.
- frb 16y agoMaybe 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-content-company-2010-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-is-focused-were-a-conte...
- michaelbuckbee 16y agoThat 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'.
- dasil003 16y agoYeah 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.
- mcfunley 16y agoPutting 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.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- mechanical_fish 16y agoNor was it a particularly clueful way to pre-empt the rumor that "Delicious is shutting down".
- andreyf 16y agoWas it the original team that got acquired?
- wyclif 16y agoNo, it was this team: http://www.petefreitag.com/images/blog/delicious_office.jpg http://www.petefreitag.com/images/blog/delicious_office.jpg
- jasonkester 16y agoOff 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.
- wyclif 16y agodel.icio.us was a fairly early example of the lean startup.
- MikeCapone 16y ago"Sorry, Internal Server Error." Sadly, that's probably what's next for Delicious.
- rufo 16y agoYes, I thought this was a (somewhat cruel) joke as well when I got the error…
- ddrager 16y agoYahoo 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/ 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.
- zoomzoom 16y agoGoogle 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.
- batasrki 16y agoTotally 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.
- Isofarro 16y agoNo! 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.
- metageek 16y agoYeah, 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.
- gojomo 16y agoIf 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.
- pronoiac 16y agoIt's up on the dev blog: http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/posts/2010/12/whats-next-for-delicious-cross-post/ http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/posts/2010/12/whats-nex...
- plusbryan 16y agoIf 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.
- raphman 16y agoJust in case: http://savedelicious.pommepause.com/ http://savedelicious.pommepause.com/ (collaborative crawling of Delicious using a Chrome extension)
- dgrant 16y agoAnyone know a good alternative to Delicious?
- jleader 16y agoNote 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-bookmarklet.html http://blog.delicious.com/blog/2010/12/tags-return-to-the-bo..., but it's gone, as are the rss and atom feeds, etc.
- drgath 16y agoThe static page was put up to handle the massive load hitting the blog.
- javadi82 16y agoI 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 http://docs.yahoo.com/info/misc/history.html
- random42 16y agoWhy 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.
- itsnotvalid 16y agohttp://blog.delicious.com/ http://blog.delicious.com/ The blog has since only hosted two single web pages (http://blog.delicious.com/index.htm http://blog.delicious.com/index.htm and http://blog.delicious.com/blog/2010/12/whats-next-for-delicious.html 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 http://del.icio.us, with the dots, since 2005). I was and am also a pro user of http://flickr.com 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.