Delicious (formerly del.icio.us) is being shut down by Yahoo and with it the Social Media world loses one of its originals. We lose the birth of tagging as a means for organizing data. We lose a wealth of crowdsourced data. We lose one of the first, most successful and most popular human powered search engines.
If Yahoo had been smart they would’ve figured out the value of incorporating Delicious bookmarks into search results. If had been smart it would have never even thought to shut down Delicious because…
It’s about more than just bookmarks
The real sin here is not just that we lose bookmarks, because realistically I’ve already exported them. No, the real issue here is that the death of Delicious is a sign of impermanence. It signifies that even though you’ve got a good horse, that can still race, it could still end up as glue.
Do a quick search for Delicious on Twitter right now and you’ll see a number of people bemoaning the loss of years of curation. Some people have bookmarks numbering in the thousands. The thinking could quickly become “Why devote all that time and all of that effort if ultimately it will all come crashing down?” What about Flickr? Is Flickr next on the chopping block? If Delicious could go, what next?
I’m not foolish enough to think that companies keep around underperforming products, Yahoo Buzz is no great loss, but Delicious WAS the industry standard for social bookmarking. The failure of Yahoo’s management to effectively put in place a strategy for Delicious is no excuse for killing a product. What Yahoo did here was betray our trust. I trust that the services I use will remain intact, especially if they are popular and essential tools for an industry such as Social Media.
As Yahoo prepares to layoff 600+ people and readjust their strategy to delay what seems inevitable, they simultaneously prove that they are ill-equipped to resurrect the company.
Only one reason left
With Yahoo’s decision to kill Delicious I have one remaining reason to keep that Yahoo ID…Flickr. If Delicious could perish, so too could Flickr. It leaves me wondering if it’s worth it to continue publishing pictures, tagging, adding descriptions if in a year or two Yahoo’s inept management decides to kill it and focus on Yahoo Mail-Group-Deal-Widget or whatever “brilliant” idea they have next.
What’s next?
I have moved my bookmarks (some of them) to Diigo (pronounced D-EE-go).
You can find me here: http://www.diigo.com/user/jgibbard
Part of me is excited at the fresh start, much like my fresh start of a new work Twitter account: @jgibbard_dp
I mourn the loss of the Delicious network of people and I hope people will adopt Diigo. It’s actually more feature-rich. Give it a try.