Yahoo! Buys del.icio.us

HellSpam writes "The developers at del.icio.us have announced that they were purchased by Yahoo!. From the post: 'We're proud to announce that del.icio.us has joined the Yahoo! family. Together we'll continue to improve how people discover, remember and share on the Internet, with a big emphasis on the power of community. We're excited to be working with the Yahoo! Search team - they definitely get social systems and their potential to change the web. (We're also excited to be joining our fraternal twin Flickr!)'" For background on this purchase, carre4 writes "Stuart Maxwell, Jeff Barr, and Yahoo! team's Jeremy Zawodny recently did an interview explaining What's so cool about del.icio.us, in which Jeremy gave a non-committal answer about Yahoo acquiring del.ico.us"

Comments

simpy

[jambay]

i like http://simpy.com/ for social bookmarking. i've found it to be a good delicious alternative.

Re:simpy

[otisg]

Hey, I like Simpy, too, and apparently a the Slashdot crowd suddenly loves it as well. For those new to Simpy - you can pull your del.icio.us bookmarks into Simpy through Simpy's third party support. And don't forget to tag your Mom 2.0.

Accounts

[willscott]

So what will this mean about current accounts, what is the migration expected to be? and congrats to the del.icio.us guys for getting this buisness built up in under a year!

Re:Accounts

[Bogtha]

Registered are nothing: they don't necessarily buy, click on links, etc... So what's the big deal?

Aren't Yahoo famous for their "portal" and web directory? It seems to me that right now it's a fairly good indicator of what pages are popular and have good content, which is valuable to Yahoo.

Apart from anything else, Yahoo could simply correlate what you bookmark with what other people bookmark, and suggest websites to you based on shared interests. That adds value to their portal.

On the other hand, if Yahoo start mining this data, spammers will quickly catch on and start "bookmarking" their own sites, so it's not all smooth sailing.

Re:Accounts

[tommers]

It took about two months before Yahoo created dual logins for flickr and they say users will have to migrate by sometime in 2006. Probably a similar timeframe here. Especially since this integrates with Yahoo 360, My Web 2.0 in much more immediate ways than Flickr did.

And...

[Chris Bradshaw]

Google Bookmark (Beta) coming soon....

Re:And...

[takeya]

Hopefully. I love del.icio.us but I am betting they are going to...

1: inject delicious with banner/image/animated/otherwise intrusive advertising
2: overbrand it against the original (ie the Y! logo on each page...)
3: start tracking and analyzing people's bookmarks more for their search
4: enforce limits on the number of bookmarks that people can have, or charge for "premium" services (del.icio.us right now is unlimited bookmarks, free.)
5: and worst of all, make us merge our yahoo and del.icio.us accounts.

At least if Google comes out with bookmarks, they're sure to do a better job ;-)

Re:And...

[rblum]

1: inject delicious with banner/image/animated/otherwise intrusive advertising

Hm. Strange. I don't see that on Flickr - what makes you think it'l be on del?

2: overbrand it against the original (ie the Y! logo on each page...)
Looking at Flickr, again, it's at the bottom of each page. Sure kill to look at a logo in exchange for a free service. Especially if it's at the bottom of the page...

3: start tracking and analyzing people's bookmarks more for their search
You're not exactly getting forced to share your bookmarks. They could've just crawled del instead of buying them.

4: enforce limits on the number of bookmarks that people can have, or charge for "premium" services (del.icio.us right now is unlimited bookmarks, free.)
Based on what information? Oh, you're making this just up? Sorry, must've missed that.

5: and worst of all, make us merge our yahoo and del.icio.us accounts.

Again, looking at Flickr, that didn't happen. And if it does, I'm not entirely unhappy. I don't want hundreds of online identities.

Re:And...

[kosmicki]

http://video.google.com/ Really, click it.

Yahoo Is Evil

[meehawl]

Notwithstanding the booster drivel, it both amuses and saddens me that "Web 2.0" is indeed turning out to be just another exit strategy and hype spew for tool makers, as many people said all along.

Yahoo is where good ideas go to die in its evil, uncaring corporate bosom of anti-user hostility. EGroups. Geocities. Broadcast. The list goes on and on.

"When you are old, you become impatient with the way in which the young applaud the most insignificant improvements - the invention of some new valve or sprocket - while remaining heedless of the world's barbarism"
(Julian Barnes - Flaubert's Parrot)

The young and the naive at least have an excuse for credulous optimism. Those old enough to know better usually *do* know better, but have a vested interest in the whole bubble boosterism.

Re:Yahoo Is Evil

[tommers]

I would be interested in seeing the list go on and on?

The companies you mentioned were acquired in many years ago (many in web years) in a time where lots of new ideas floundered and Yahoo was a very different company.

Do you think that Flickr is no longer thriving? Or that Konfabulator is languishing? Or that Oddpost wasn't well integrated into the new Yahoo Mail?

And I'd assume that EGroups became groups.yahoo.com which is the biggest groups community out there.

Geocities was obviously a piss-poor decision, but I guess I never knew why it was so great.

And while Broadcast was among many companies hailed as the beginning the first Web 2.0 that never happened, it seemed every venture into video made early in the decade failed.

I see a trend

[giorgiofr]

EBay buys Skype. Yahoo buys del.icio.us and konfabulator before that. Adobe buys Macromedia.
Is this the end of the good times? Are we witnessing the beginning of the "real" internet business, where there is no space for startups and the only players have to be the huge ones? I don't say this in a damn-the-megacorps way. I am just worried that this kind of business is finally becoming... well pretty much like EVERY business out there.
Any thoughts?

Re:I see a trend

[ergo98]

Is this the end of the good times? Are we witnessing the beginning of the "real" internet business, where there is no space for startups and the only players have to be the huge ones?

Are you new to the internet? This is exactly what happened during Bubble 1.0: All of the big, established companies were desperately fearful that they were going to miss out on whatever the up and comers were doing, so they bought them up left and right. The reality is that such is a great time for small startups because they don't have to bother with silly things like revenue models or rational business plans - Just try to pay the bills long enough to get bought out by Yahoo/Google/Microsoft/Ebay and then let them deal with it. Eventually big business will find that a lot of them were, for lack of a better word, fads (podcasting, for instance, has incredibly limited real-world potential, but by the talk you'd think we're soon going to listen to every dweeb with a microphone) in an anti-revenue space, and they'll abandon them.

Rinse and repeat.

Re:I see a trend

[Mr. Cancelled]

Are we witnessing the beginning of the "real" internet business, where there is no space for startups

I think you're misunderstanding a lot of the so called "startups". A lot of business's get started with the hope of being bought out by a big company.

Look at it this way:
Would you rather form a startup, work hard and sweat all your life hoping to eventually rival the giants in your field, or would you prefer to form a startup, work hard and sweat for a few years, until some big corporation sees the what you've achieved, and gives you a big paycheck, effectively buying out your company?

While I can appreciate those who want to someday replace the Yahoo's, and Adobe's of the world, I myself would be more than happy to spend a few years toiling in the fields, if it meant a paycheck which would allow me to retire at the age of 40!

Not that del.icio.us was looking for the "big payoff", but your post seems to imply that being bought out is somehow akin to selling out (very similar to the rants you hear when a popular independant band signs on to a major label), which is something I disagree with. Having said that, I am rather interested in what yaho will do with the technology... I'm guessing we'll see some new enhancements to the Yahoo toolbar for starters. Something like "People who have enjoyed the page you're currently on have also enjoyed the following: www.xxx.com, www.yyy.com, etc."

Re:I see a trend

[drinkypoo]

Short answer to your question: No.

Medium-length answer to your question: When Microsoft runs out of startup companies to buy, I'll start worrying.

Slightly long answer: Of course not. It is well-known that bureaucracy stifles invention, it's one of the basic tenets of business. This is why (to refer to answer #2) Microsoft keeps buying companies all the time - it's a lot easier than trying to out-innovate the world. There will always be new fruit to pick, and people coming up with new and inventive ways to pick it. These companies will always be attractive purchases for the megacorporations for two reasons which should be perfectly obvious to anyone with more than one neuron but I will enumerate them anyway. First, they add value to their own products/brand. Second, it stops that company from competing and prevents anyone else from buying them. Thus it's both an investment and an insurance policy.

Re:I see a trend

[That's Unpossible!]

Are we witnessing the beginning of the "real" internet business, where there is no space for startups and the only players have to be the huge ones?

Delicious could have said no, we aren't selling. It's not like Yahoo forced them to sell. So how exactly did you come to the conclusion that the only players are the huge ones? Delicious was a player.

Re:I see a trend

[giorgiofr]

but your post seems to imply that being bought out is somehow akin to selling out

No, not really, that's not what I meant. I just thought it would become harder to start a new business as a small player if everybody else is huge. And yes, it might be better to sell and retire at 40, but I don't know for sure... I guess it depends on what your goals are.

Re:I see a trend

[ultramk]

Something like "People who have enjoyed the page you're currently on have also enjoyed the following: www.xxx.com, www.yyy.com, etc.

You know, it wouldn't have killed you to put NSFW on that first link, and the second one isn't even working... jeesh.

m-

(yes, it's a joke.)

del.icio.us and Katrina PeopleFinder

[wayward]

The Katrina PeopleFinder project http://katrinahelp.info/wiki/index.php/Katrina_Peo pleFinder_Project was a group of volunteers who put together data from numerous Katrina sites. The team members used del.icio.us to add and tag links to sites with survivor/missing data. It was really a good resource, and the PeopleFinder project ultimately gathered over 640000 records and supported over a million searches.

The deal may be delicious...

[digitaldc]

...but did it go down smoothly?

Tagging vs. Searching

[Mean_Nishka]

This is a good acquisition for Yahoo. Makes a lot of sense since much of what del.icio.us is about is 'tagging' the web.

What's interesting is seeing the dynamic of Internet search philosphy developing here. Google's about 'searching' and Yahoo, it seems, is about 'tagging.'

Re:Tagging vs. Searching

[blahtree]

1) Google is about tagging too. Witness Gmail. Labels = tags.

2) Personally, I don't see tagging and searching as competing Internet search philosophies. One is the table of contents and one is the index. You use both, just at different times depending on your need.

Yet another free service that'll become useless?

[vfwlkr]

Except that it all web2 hype even before Yahoo acquired it. Now that's its been Yahoo'd, it going to become completely irrelevant

There's a fundamental difference between how Yahoo and Google approach a new service:
Yahoo: How do we milk this thing?
Google: How does this benefit our end users?
Not convinced: How many clicks to read new Gmail, and how many to read yahoo mail? And how many ads in each? Or compare blogger to Yahoo360.

Yahoo acquiring a web2.0 hyped servie, is an oxymoron. The web2.0 folks, atleast claim to making stuff easier for end users. Yahoo, on the other hand, works on the exact opposite philiosophy. What's the point of this acquisition then?

Re:Yet another free service that'll become useless

[FatRatBastard]

What's the point of this acquisition then?

Tagging, pure and simple. It has nothing (or very little) to do with how many ads Yahoo wants to throw at you. Yahoo isn't looking to simply buy eyeballs to boost their ad revenues. Yahoo believes that it can best Google by having humans tag information as opposed to algorithms tag information, which is the way (apparently) Google currently orders the web. This is why Yahoo purchased Flickr, and I suspect it will be the foremost driver of future acquisitions.

It will be interesting to see which philosophy, if any, is "better."

They want the del.icio.us user base

[BigCheese]

Yahoo already has a nearly identical service. It works but, there is not much of a community behind it since there was no compelling reason to leave del.icio.us to use Yahoo bookmarks.
They're buying del.icio.us for the community not the technology.

Alternatives?

[edmicman]

What are the alternatives since everyone (both here and digg) seem to be bitching a whole lot about it? Is there a free/open source something you can install on your own server? It seems like a simple enough concept, I would think someone had already copied it by now.

Re:So...

[GweeDo]

Don't you mean "rid.iculo.us" yahoo accounts?

all your base...

[Anonymous Coward]

belong.to.us

In Other News...

[craXORjack]

The top computer executive and last remaining employee from a dotcom era online delicatessan has let his web domain http://deli.cio.us/ lapse but plans to register a new domain http://face.tio.us/ which will compete head to head with The Onion, currently number two in the field of late-breaking, hard-hitting faux journalism. Herman has a new dream. Instead of Fed-Exing beef jerky, he wants to grow his satire's readership large enough to take over the number two spot. Then, through a leveraged buyout of The Onion become large enough to take on the 800 pound gorilla, Fox News.

Says Herman Johnson, CIO of Mail Order Meats, 'my site was getting pounded hard by a bunch of yahoos who seemed to have no interest in spicy smoked meats. I don't know where they were coming from but it was one more in a long series of unfortunate events that burned through the last of my IPO money. Earlier this year I had already moved the offices from a 200,000 sq. ft. high rise in Mountain View to a corner of my parent's basement to try to conserve cash.'

'Suddenly this storm of activity hit. They used up all my bandwidth but didn't buy anything, only leaving rude innuendoes in the forums about my kielbasa sausages. It was just time to try something new. Plus my mom needed the space in her deep freezer where I kept my inventory and the Slim Jims kept disappearing. I suspect an inside job. I told my dad I know it's him and if I ever catch him I will call the police.'

Mail Order Meats (Stock symbol MOM) which once reached a high of 212 1/8 dollars a share now trades over the counter at 0.00004 cents.

Some offline application maybe?

[vitalyb]

I love the concept of Delicious.
However, I really hate how I have to wait everytime I want to search/edit my bookmarks. I really wish that there was some kind of external app (Powermarks style) that let me easily play with my bookmarks and update/sync from Delicious only in the background.

Anyone knows anything like that?

Re:Yet another free service that'll become useless

[Quixote]

Insightful my ass!

Google: How does this benefit our end users?

If you think Google is about benefitting users and not making money, you're naive. Google is a public company now. Their sole responsibility is to their shareholders and not their "users".

And how many ads in each?

Yahoo has 1 ad at the top. Period. GMail has ads all along the side. So if you're counting numbers, GMail loses.
And more importantly: Google digs through your email to serve you ads. Don't you people find this just a little bit creepy? And these ads benefit the users.. how? Are they there to make money for GMail, or to somehow magically improve the content of your email message?

del.icio.us apps for macosx

[dsandler]

For Mac users there's Cocoalicious, just such an application (key features: add, edit, search, visit, rate).

Alternatively, if you're just looking for fast local searching, there's delimport, which periodically sucks down your del.icio.us bookmarks and indexes them with Spotlight.

Fascinating social experiment

[jmenon]

Don't you think it's really interesting that the moment something like del.icio.us is bought, the knee-jerk reaction of most of us can almost be counted on to follow this pattern:

(i) How do I get away from them?
(ii) When is Google going to welcome me home?

I think it is amazing how much trust we automatically place in Google. I always find myself thinking, "Oh, Google wants this information about me? Sure, here you go. Have my phone number and social security number too."

Honestly, if Google offered an on-line password-management service, millions of us would flock to it. But if Yahoo! or Microsoft, or any other company did it? Forget it.

And all this for a company who scans our email in order to serve us ads. Someone should do a sociological study of this phenomenon.


This is trust, this is customer loyalty, this is why Google just...

...just wins.