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> Delicious was for a time at the cultural nerve center of the web, and I think had the potential to be something like a twitter or a reddit if stewarded correc

> Delicious was for a time at the cultural nerve center of the web, and I think had the potential to be something like a twitter or a reddit if stewarded correctly. Delicious turning into Twitter or Reddit would have been a real loss. "But it doesn't scale!" is practically a mantra for HN, but scalability is fairly low on the list of values for me. I'd rather have interesting websites than big websites, and I'd rather see websites go bankrupt than compromise their values. The reason I care that Delicious might come back is that it was still interesting when it went down last. Digg and Slashdot still exist, but frankly I care so little that I actually had to look up that fact, and after verifying that they existed, I clicked away.

bE9a3S5So8igd3 6y ago
Now with the idear of delicious coming back, your comment makes me consider all the good low-to-mid scale shit we've lost over time. In ~ 2008 it seems like there were just more fun/interesting sites around. Maybe I was just in an exploratory phase - late teens - and was discovering new things often. Or maybe the barrier to entry today, in terms of design/polish/product is weirdly high, and has pushed out the seeker-net in favor of normie-net.
- kerkeslager 6y ago
  The barrier to entry for most interesting things is <$100 and a few hours time. The barrier to entry for making money is a different thing.
  - bE9a3S5So8igd3 6y ago
    The point I made is more nuanced than that. I didn't say there is a large financial barrier to entry for the production of a modern website. The point is, Delicious, Digg, etc. would fizzle out today pretty quickly. Consumers have come to expect a certain refinement of design, usability, mobile-bullshit, etc. etc. that web companies of yore weren't exactly known for. What we're left with today is a bunch of crap that looks good but lacks novelty. It's mostly due to this principle actually that Facebook usurped Myspace despite having far fewer features. One exception to the rule lately is Roam Research, which looks like dog shit but is apparently popular.
    - kerkeslager 6y ago
      I understood your point, I'm just rejecting it. If your measure of success is scaling and making massive amounts of money, then sure, all the successful website are boring. But there are plenty of interesting websites still out there. There are still PHPBB forums which "look like dog shit" but host vibrant communities. I'm not sure on what basis you would consider these communities to have "fizzled out".
      - bE9a3S5So8igd3 6y ago
        I think it's clear by your response that you didn't get it. > There are still PHPBB forums which "look like dog shit" but host vibrant communities There are small communities that predate modern web/Facebook, which is irrelevant. There is also craigslist, and its shitty design is remarked upon constantly. It's frequented by the elderly so falls outside the scope of discussion. You're married to the idea that design standards haven't changed, or that the web as a platform hasn't become much more sophisticated over the last ~decade.
- glenstein 6y ago
  I think the most obvious example I would add to this list you are thinking of would be livejournal. I also had a handful of SoundCloud-like medium scale music sites that I went to, like Purevolume. I also remember this as a time when Google didn't yet have a reputation for abandoning everything they touched, so you could get inspired by, say, Google Knol or Google Wave. I had hope that Google Reader might grow into something, and the was a fraction of a second where we all wanted to believe in Google Plus.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    There are no real barriers to blogging or using an RSS reader if you want to. (RSS feeds are less ubiquitous than they used to be but they're still common.) And, of course, for saving and sharing bookmarks, it's Pinboard that's buying del.icio.us. I never really tried out Wave but Knol suffered from the problem you'd expect if everyone gets to write their own self-promotional competing article on a topic.
    - glenstein 6y ago
      >There are no real barriers to blogging or using an RSS reader if you want to. (RSS feeds are less ubiquitous than they used to be but they're still common.) I'm perfectly aware of this and have used RSS feeds on a daily basis for more than a decade, so I'm not sure what's being suggested here.
    - robertlagrant 6y ago
      > but Knol suffered from the problem you'd expect if everyone gets to write their own self-promotional competing article on a topic Now we have Quora, of course.
  - no_wizard 6y ago
    I am still upset about Google Wave. So ahead of its time! I have never understood why that got the axe, it took everything they where doing great at that time (chat, video, email, and the newish At the time G suite apps (called something else then) and just meshed them together in a surprisingly useful and pleasant way. Also the whiteboard features were really good particularly for it’s time. This Mashable article does a good job explaining it in more detail[0] I can’t believe it to this day they couldn’t figure it out. It was very ahead of its time [0]https://mashable.com/2009/05/28/google-wave-guide/ https://mashable.com/2009/05/28/google-wave-guide/
glenstein 6y ago
>Delicious turning into Twitter or Reddit would have been a real loss. I don't mean to suggest it would have been similar to them culturally, or that it would have evolved into a copy of reddit or twitter. It would have still been delicious, in the sense that it would always be a booking service (as long as they never went all in with Delicious Stacks, which I think nobody remembers except me). I also don't doubt that, at some point, it probably would sell it's soul and lose whatever signature personality it had according to the main users. But it would have remained useful, grown, and been one of the main places everybody goes. Even with the loses you identify, it was an invaluable asset that could have kept Yahoo relevant.
- tripzilch 6y ago
  > Even with the loses you identify, it was an invaluable asset that could have kept Yahoo relevant. And in this alternative future, if del.icio.us had kept its core as a social bookmark sharing service, it could even have kept the Web relevant.

bE9a3S5So8igd3 6y ago

Now with the idear of delicious coming back, your comment makes me consider all the good low-to-mid scale shit we've lost over time. In ~ 2008 it seems like there were just more fun/interesting sites around. Maybe I was just in an exploratory phase - late teens - and was discovering new things often. Or maybe the barrier to entry today, in terms of design/polish/product is weirdly high, and has pushed out the seeker-net in favor of normie-net.

kerkeslager 6y ago
The barrier to entry for most interesting things is <$100 and a few hours time. The barrier to entry for making money is a different thing.
- bE9a3S5So8igd3 6y ago
  The point I made is more nuanced than that. I didn't say there is a large financial barrier to entry for the production of a modern website. The point is, Delicious, Digg, etc. would fizzle out today pretty quickly. Consumers have come to expect a certain refinement of design, usability, mobile-bullshit, etc. etc. that web companies of yore weren't exactly known for. What we're left with today is a bunch of crap that looks good but lacks novelty. It's mostly due to this principle actually that Facebook usurped Myspace despite having far fewer features. One exception to the rule lately is Roam Research, which looks like dog shit but is apparently popular.
  - kerkeslager 6y ago
    I understood your point, I'm just rejecting it. If your measure of success is scaling and making massive amounts of money, then sure, all the successful website are boring. But there are plenty of interesting websites still out there. There are still PHPBB forums which "look like dog shit" but host vibrant communities. I'm not sure on what basis you would consider these communities to have "fizzled out".
    - bE9a3S5So8igd3 6y ago
      I think it's clear by your response that you didn't get it. > There are still PHPBB forums which "look like dog shit" but host vibrant communities There are small communities that predate modern web/Facebook, which is irrelevant. There is also craigslist, and its shitty design is remarked upon constantly. It's frequented by the elderly so falls outside the scope of discussion. You're married to the idea that design standards haven't changed, or that the web as a platform hasn't become much more sophisticated over the last ~decade.
glenstein 6y ago
I think the most obvious example I would add to this list you are thinking of would be livejournal. I also had a handful of SoundCloud-like medium scale music sites that I went to, like Purevolume. I also remember this as a time when Google didn't yet have a reputation for abandoning everything they touched, so you could get inspired by, say, Google Knol or Google Wave. I had hope that Google Reader might grow into something, and the was a fraction of a second where we all wanted to believe in Google Plus.
- ghaff 6y ago
  There are no real barriers to blogging or using an RSS reader if you want to. (RSS feeds are less ubiquitous than they used to be but they're still common.) And, of course, for saving and sharing bookmarks, it's Pinboard that's buying del.icio.us. I never really tried out Wave but Knol suffered from the problem you'd expect if everyone gets to write their own self-promotional competing article on a topic.
  - glenstein 6y ago
    >There are no real barriers to blogging or using an RSS reader if you want to. (RSS feeds are less ubiquitous than they used to be but they're still common.) I'm perfectly aware of this and have used RSS feeds on a daily basis for more than a decade, so I'm not sure what's being suggested here.
  - robertlagrant 6y ago
    > but Knol suffered from the problem you'd expect if everyone gets to write their own self-promotional competing article on a topic Now we have Quora, of course.
- no_wizard 6y ago
  I am still upset about Google Wave. So ahead of its time! I have never understood why that got the axe, it took everything they where doing great at that time (chat, video, email, and the newish At the time G suite apps (called something else then) and just meshed them together in a surprisingly useful and pleasant way. Also the whiteboard features were really good particularly for it’s time. This Mashable article does a good job explaining it in more detail[0] I can’t believe it to this day they couldn’t figure it out. It was very ahead of its time [0]https://mashable.com/2009/05/28/google-wave-guide/ https://mashable.com/2009/05/28/google-wave-guide/

glenstein 6y ago

>Delicious turning into Twitter or Reddit would have been a real loss. I don't mean to suggest it would have been similar to them culturally, or that it would have evolved into a copy of reddit or twitter. It would have still been delicious, in the sense that it would always be a booking service (as long as they never went all in with Delicious Stacks, which I think nobody remembers except me). I also don't doubt that, at some point, it probably would sell it's soul and lose whatever signature personality it had according to the main users. But it would have remained useful, grown, and been one of the main places everybody goes. Even with the loses you identify, it was an invaluable asset that could have kept Yahoo relevant.

tripzilch 6y ago
> Even with the loses you identify, it was an invaluable asset that could have kept Yahoo relevant. And in this alternative future, if del.icio.us had kept its core as a social bookmark sharing service, it could even have kept the Web relevant.