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Yahoo! Says Delicious To Get the Boot, Not the Axe

Posted by timothy on from the welcome-to-erewhon dept.

geegel writes "In a statement on their Delicious official blog, Yahoo now claims that: '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 that means can be everyone's guess, but at least for now, your delicious accounts are safe."

84 comments

  1. heh by stoolpigeon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This doesn't really change anything for me. They fired their people, and now issue a vague statement that implies they are looking for a buyer. So what? And they are disappointed that it got out, but I'm not. It gave me warning I might not have had otherwise.

    --
    It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
    1. Re:heh by geegel · · Score: 2

      I guess it depends on how you use the service. Personally, I never bothered to open an account there, but I'm subscribed to several bookmark RSS feeds, such as this one belonging to the Open Society Institute (aka Soros Foundation).

      --
      right...
    2. Re:heh by stoolpigeon · · Score: 1

      That's true - I just used it as a handy way to store and sync my bookmarks. Their firefox plugin is really nice.

      After reading yesterdays thread, I set up an account with Diigo. I went through the import process roughly 24 hours ago - it still hasn't finished. They say they are experiencing heavy loads that have slowed things down. That's not too encouraging really. But I'm really thinking about setting up Scuttle and just using my own site.

      I did like browsing what other people were bookmarking on delicious at first, but pretty much quit when everything I would see there was the same stuff I was seeing at slashdot/reddit/digg, etc. I never dug deeper than that.

      I would think for people like you the key would be to find out what the people you are interested in will do, as opposed to what will happen with delicious. I'd be more confident that delicious would continue on if they hadn't fired everybody. What are the odds someone will buy the software but keep it going the same without any of the people?

      --
      It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
    3. Re:heh by Dhalka226 · · Score: 2

      What are the odds someone will buy the software but keep it going the same without any of the people?

      Why wouldn't they? Delicious could be coded in, what, a week by a solo coder? With maybe another week or two to code the browser plugins? (I've never coded one for either browser, so I have no real means to estimate that.)

      The reality is, delicious isn't that special. Whatever value it might have to some other company is in its users and its data, not the code or the people. Infrastructure is a concern, but it is with or without the people coming with it.

    4. Re:heh by The+End+Of+Days · · Score: 2

      I like your estimation technique. You share an attitude with most of my clients - you have no idea how to do something, so it must be easy.

      I gotta tell you, I've made a lot more money assuming the other way.

    5. Re:heh by Dhalka226 · · Score: 2

      That theory would work far better if I weren't a web developer by profession.

      Maybe there is some hidden complexity to delicious that I do not see; I only use it via browser plug-in as a bookmark sync, not the website itself. But I see an extremely simplistic database with users, bookmarks and tags, the output of which is some extremely simple HTML pages or an RSS feed. Infrastructure, as I already said, is a concern -- but not exactly a staggering one.

      What, exactly, are you claiming is going to take large swathes of time? Or are you simply talking about of your ass because you have no idea how to do something so it must be hard?

    6. Re:heh by Seumas · · Score: 1

      I'm a huge fan of Delicious and hate to see it "go", but this is too late. They needed to clarify this IMMEDIATELY. I already researched alternatives yesterday and eventually signed up and paid for (including an "archive account" extra fee) service at pinboard.in and I don't see any reason why I would pay for that service and go back to Delicious in any form. They needed to respond to this in the same day, to catch people in the same cycle of news.

      In a couple years, this will be used as an example of how not to handle things.

    7. Re:heh by ideonexus · · Score: 1

      So what you're saying is that we should see a ton of Delicious clones online next Friday?

      I always think it's hilarious to watch novice programmers grossly underestimate the amount of time it takes to code a robust application. The same people are wondering why it's taking so long to clean up Diaspora when they could have supposedly coded it in a weekend with some friends and a case of beer.

      I'll look forward to seeing your version of Delicious online next week; any other response to this reply would simply be you "talking out of your ass."

      --
      i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
    8. Re:heh by The+End+Of+Days · · Score: 1

      With maybe another week or two to code the browser plugins? (I've never coded one for either browser, so I have no real means to estimate that.)

      No, I took it from your ass. Now you've managed to impress me even less. Web developer indeed.

    9. Re:heh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow... nice comeback Dennis Leary. Is it so hard to answer the poster's complexity question? I don't know what Delicious is (yet), but I am curious as to what makes it special and you appear to have insight. So, let's hear it. Don't make me beg.

    10. Re:heh by The+End+Of+Days · · Score: 1

      Who said I was poopooing the estimates? I could give some, I've designed and built much more complicated systems, but that's not the point. I was addressing the OP's propensity for dismissing the parts he didn't know how to do as easy. That's a foolish attitude, and insidious if allowed unchecked.

      I'm helping. In a mean way, so it sticks. I'm a pro, you might want to learn something here.

    11. Re:heh by fotoguzzi · · Score: 1

      If you are just keeping track of your own bookmarks, then what you did makes sense. If you are using del.icio.us to see what other people are bookmarking, then it might be worthwhile to keep your del.icio.us account open in case something good happens.

      --
      Their they're doing there hair.
    12. Re:heh by MrMarket · · Score: 2

      Here's a worklist to get the "solo programmer" started. I'm sure he can sort this out and go-live in a week.

    13. Re:heh by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      The hard part about del.icio.us is scalability. If it weren't for that I could knock it off in Drupal in a week or less and I'm not much of a web developer. Performance, however, can be a bitch.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  2. buy it by headlessspider · · Score: 2

    yahoo! is just saying, "anybody want to buy it?"

    --
    -- and if life has failed you leave the cross you're nailed to
  3. Time for backup and packing by Ilgaz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As this is a company who could easily rm -rf entire geocities, easily compressible or archival friendly data, make sure you get a local backup or move your data as soon as today.

    Let me also remind they deleted (yes, but with warnings) Yahoo Briefcase right while "cloud based" (sorry!) storage was on rise. Especially in an age where storage networks actually does unbelievable amount of compression built-in (de dupe etc).

    My start page is my.yahoo.com for almost a decade now and in all these years, I have befriended some actual Yahoo staff. So if I say backup, trust me and start packing. I wouldn't trust to flickr either for same reasons above. Buy/use a good quality 10 pack DVD-R for God's sake.

    1. Re:Time for backup and packing by interval1066 · · Score: 1

      "My start page is my.yahoo.com for almost a decade now and in all these years, I have befriended some actual Yahoo staff."

      Boo hoo. Its a business decision, not a personal attack against YOU. Unless you managed to piss off any of your yahoo "friends". Yahoo was a ok service, I suppose, but there are much better. Move to one of those.If you feel entitled to a service and these players keep pissing you off by shutting down and making you have to re-arrange your life every 5 years you can always start your own service. See what its like to run a business, wouldn't that be something?

      --
      Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
    2. Re:Time for backup and packing by mysidia · · Score: 1

      I wouldn't trust to flickr either for same reasons above.

      For some rason, I think flickr is a little different, because I actually pay for it... whereas Del.ici.ous and Geocities were free services.

      Don't you suppose they would think twice before closing all our accounts and turning away all our $$$? I don't think Yahoo is that ungreedy.

    3. Re:Time for backup and packing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      DVDs as backups? Are you insane?? You store your data on multiple RAID-equipped machines in different locations around the globe that are all in active use. Encrypt it if it's sensitive, but don't just count on that $5 archival DVD never getting lost, burned, scratched or stolen...

    4. Re:Time for backup and packing by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      So has the Yahoo staff you've become friends with start mailing out their resumes? Because THIS, this right here exemplified in your post, is why Yahoo is on life support and fighting for breath. They pay frankly insane prices for properties like Geocities or Delicious and then have NO CLUE as to what to do with them afterward. None at all. No business plans, no plans to grow or move the company forward, no advertising plans, just a "buzzword bingo" shopping list they have no damned clue what to do with once they "win" the property in question.

      Frankly I haven't seen a company this badly mismanaged since the glory days of AOHell and their great "buzzword bingo" shopping spree. And we all know how well THAT turned out, with AOL nearly destroying Time Warner and losing..what? 80% of their value? Frankly I'm waiting for the place to slide a little further down towards the basement and then MSFT will snatch them up. The portal and the email are still worth money for eyeballs and data mining, but it is pretty obvious that the mismanagement at Yahoo would take a goose that laid golden eggs and serve it up with a side of mashed potatoes.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  4. 2-3 potential buyers may have cancelled by Ilgaz · · Score: 1

    yahoo! is just saying, "anybody want to buy it?"

    Spreading word like that drops an online services value to absolute zero. An online service lives by user trust.

    I really wonder their account closure ratings right now after the news have spread even to mainstream media.

    1. Re:2-3 potential buyers may have cancelled by stoolpigeon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The people I've talked to are not closing their accounts - they are exporting their bookmarks, looking for options, and waiting to see what happens. The fact that Diigo has been completely overwhelmed since the news broke makes me think something like this is happening a lot.

      --
      It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
    2. Re:2-3 potential buyers may have cancelled by Seumas · · Score: 1

      I researched alternatives. Went with pinboard.in, because they tout themselves as an "anti...social bookmarking service" and are very similar to Delicious. They even use the Delicious API. They charge a one time fee (fine with me, hopefully keeps out spammers and is at least a business model that makes sense). I even decided to pay a little extra for an "archive" account (stores a copy of the page I've bookmarked). Then I deleted my Delicious account. I don't see any reason to keep it, even if they "recover" from this "fumble".

      Frankly, I like the idea of being back at another little developer-run small service instead of "in the hands of Yahoo!". Until these guys sell out to some giant company that can't get rich with the service and drops it, too.

      It seems to me that someone needs to develop a decent P2P services "infrastructure" that has no centralized hub that any one group can own or control and anyone can use general APIs to build services (like a Delicious type bookmarking service) on top of it. No worries about it going down or changing control, etc.

    3. Re:2-3 potential buyers may have cancelled by petsounds · · Score: 1

      I deleted all my bookmarks and closed my account. Yahoo is trying to sell delicious. Most of the money they expect to receive is not from the delicious codebase, but from all the user accounts and bookmark data. If you want to help them make money with your data after being such asshats about the service, go ahead. But I say, fuck 'em.

  5. just dump it already by dsanfte · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Delicious is an anachronism from the early days of web 2.0. Most people share links on Facebook now.

    --
    occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
    1. Re:just dump it already by garcia · · Score: 1

      Not many people in my list of (albeit small but above average) 205 friends use Facebook to share links. Hell, most people don't use it for much of anything it seems. Twitter and Tumblr, however, seem to be much more likely sources for link sharing.

    2. Re:just dump it already by jav1231 · · Score: 2

      Coming up with new names for essentially the same technology might be a bit anachronistic. "Web 2.0" is much like "The Cloud." We tired of "World Wide Web" and "Internet" but a rose by any other name smells the same. But I digress

      The point I made when this came out was that Delicious is more hip than Yahoo! as a brand. Were it not for some of their acquisitions Yahoo! might already have gone the way of the Dodo.

    3. Re:just dump it already by fuzzylollipop · · Score: 3, Informative

      it isn't for sharing links as much as storing your own links and making them searchable in the future, like having your own little search engine for things you want to find later from any computer.

    4. Re:just dump it already by MadChicken · · Score: 3, Informative

      First, I will never have, nor even tolerate Facebook, and second, link sharing isn't really what I used Delicious for. It's about link collection, archival and retrieval. I have moved my stuff over to Pinboard, which is not only incredibly versatile, but has the subtitle "antisocial bookmarking"... exactly my cup of tea.

      Now get off my lawn.

      --
      SYS 64738 NO CARRIER
    5. Re:just dump it already by dAzED1 · · Score: 2

      I don't use delicious to share links, I use it because I'm reading a handy article and I think "huh, in the future, I might want to find this in a few different types of situations...such as [tag name] or [tag name] or [tag name]."
      isn't that the primary use of it? Merely sharing the links with others...meh. What about sharing it with myself? I don't want a bookmark tree with folders and subfolders and links saved to several spots. In my google account, I likewise don't have just the "inbox" label, and no others. I want to organize things by content (tags). Delicious is the best site around (that I know of, at least) for doing this.

    6. Re:just dump it already by dAzED1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      ps - I, and a lot of people I know, are also actively detaching themselves from Facebook, and making steps to limit any importance it has. Facebook sure as hell doesn't have anything that replaces delicious' primary functions. I still have a facebook account, but on it my wife is my brother (and yes, she's female in real life), an old co worker is my sister (he's female), my brother is my father, I'm widowed, I was born about 40 years earlier (makes for fun banner ads!), and I live in Beruit (versus living in northern San Diego). I only keep the account there because the old people in my family have figured it out, and they have fun sharing little things with the family. I have as much need for facebook in my life going forward as I do for a landline, or cable tv (no landline or cable for years...). There were two forks of the www; the "yay wall of junk and text php/geocities!" style sites that facebook is the crown jewel of, or the plain, non-hierarchical, nosql, functional, sites that understand that I'm dealing with more and more information each and every day, and the last thing I need is a distracting mess of a website that is supposed to be a tool in my life...ala, the simplistic interface of www.google.com, gmail, and yes - delicious. I'd say delicious is far less outdated, in principle, than facebook is. 10 years from now there will still be things that function/look more or less like delicious currently does; the same can't be said for facebook (if it's still around, it will look very, very different). Facebook is a website that tries (and fails) to make mobile apps; delicious is a REST api that fills a need/role, and is also a simple website if you need that too. As the platforms that people get online with change, so to will the www.

    7. Re:just dump it already by Seumas · · Score: 1

      Pretty half-assed troll. Facebook doesn't offer a bookmarking service and who the hell cares about *sharing* bookmarks? We want to store and access them.

    8. Re:just dump it already by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You paid $9 for it, you must be crazy!

    9. Re:just dump it already by mysidia · · Score: 1

      I don't use delicious to share links, I use it because I'm reading a handy article and I think "huh, in the future, I might want to find this in a few different types of situations...such as [tag name] or [tag name] or [tag name]." isn't that the primary use of it?

      hm... No, I think that's the primary use of browser bookmarks, such as those in Firefox 3, unless you have so many bookmarks Firefox would slow to a crawl had you stored them all. Don't you think Evernote is a little more convenient for that? You can tag, add free form text, whatever... with the browser addon you "clip" a copy of the web page directly into the software, so the full article with images or some highlighted things can be saved if you like, instead of just a link.

      The original article could be gone tomorrow; URL changed, company bought out, etc... last I checked Delicious was just a bookmark system, without support for archiving things. There's some sort of piece of mind that comes from knowing "I will still be able to see this material tomorrow"; even if the original webpage vanished, or the webmaster messed with it.

      And since you are just using it for personal use, 'sharing' links doesn't seem that useful to you... in fact, it sounds like software running on your computer that stores everything locally and talks to other servers could do the trick; if you just want remote backups of a small local database and access from all your computers, there are of course some free ways to do that as well, ala Dropbox.

      For common tasks like bookmarks; it seems reasonable to have local software to assist rather than allowing on Javascript bookmarklets and browser popup windows that are subject to breakage by popup blocker, etc

    10. Re:just dump it already by dadioflex · · Score: 1

      I still have a facebook account, but on it my wife is my brother (and yes, she's female in real life), an old co worker is my sister (he's female), my brother is my father, I'm widowed, I was born about 40 years earlier (makes for fun banner ads!), and I live in Beruit (versus living in northern San Diego).

      Cute. Oh I see what you did. You took the point of Facebook and made it work against you. Clever. Those guys will never get any use from YOUR information. Of course, neither will you. Me, I just deleted my account. It is possible. Continuing to use the service and jumping through self-made hoops to obfuscate your data doesn't seem like an alternative to me. I could be wrong, but you seem like a smug, barely technologically literate asshole. All fights, no Admin Rights.

      Facebook will be around for a while. Part of the ebb and flow of web traffic. Something will come along later that supersedes it and we'll all miss the good old days when cheery, benign Facebook ruled the roost. And then we'll die and none of it will matter.

    11. Re:just dump it already by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't really post links on delicious for sharing them, but I rather see this as the price I pay to it : I give tagging and relevance information regarding links, and I take back similar information from it. What's a pity is that Yahoo doesn't seem to make a business from this information.

    12. Re:just dump it already by dAzED1 · · Score: 1

      uh...except I can't see what my friends tagged as both "linux" and "security" if I'm saving things locally...can't use any comp on the internet and get local copies...etc... No. I do *not* want a tree. I do *not* want bookmarks. And if a link disappears, I'm ok with that. Why? Because generally speaking, it will be replaced with something or, it will weed out because it was likely just not something worth saving if it wasn't something worth a website staying up for.

    13. Re:just dump it already by dAzED1 · · Score: 1

      Smugly calling someone smug while insulting people who are smug on the internet makes baby Jesus cry.
      I stated, in no unclear terms, why I remain on Facebook. My family knows my name, and knows how to find me on there. I'm on there for their benefit. They are also very happy to share all their info to a website that is selling that info. I put in false info to obfuscate the information other people are providing about me. And yes, I'm very technically illiterate. I barely know how to turn a gosh darn computer on!

    14. Re:just dump it already by mentus · · Score: 1

      Thanks for the recommendation. I've just signed up for it and also found particularly great the bookmark archiving facility. It's really annoying when you want to get back to a reference you bookmarked some time ago only to find the web site to be gone.

    15. Re:just dump it already by mysidia · · Score: 1

      uh...except I can't see what my friends tagged as both "linux" and "security" if I'm saving things locally

      You just said I don't use delicious to share links.

      In other words, you have already given up the social functions of Delicious, so it's not a factor to consider, not that other systems don't have them.

      can't use any comp on the internet and get local copies...etc...

      You can by syncing the local datastore to cloud-based storage.

      No. I do *not* want a tree. I do *not* want bookmarks.

      That does not make any sense. If you don't want bookmarks, then you don't need Delicious or anything like that.

      And if a link disappears, I'm ok with that. Why? Because generally speaking, it will be replaced with something or, it will weed out because it was likely just not something worth saving if it wasn't something worth a website staying up for.

      Interesting... so if your social bookmarking site disappears, you are ok with your list of bookmarks going away? Because generally speaking, your repository of bookmarks will be replaced with something, or it will weed out, because it wasn't worth anything anyways.

      Because sites that disappear are always the worthless sites, not worth saving, and that you had no intention of returning to.... Especially sites or articles that might be subject to slashdotting, DDoS, government or hosting provider censorship.

    16. Re:just dump it already by dAzED1 · · Score: 1

      You just said I don't use delicious to share links. In other words, you have already given up the social functions of Delicious, so it's not a factor to consider, not that other systems don't have them.
      Pull, versus push. I don't tweet about going to the bathroom, nor do I feel it makes any sense to push links out and let people know what I've tagged. But I might pull them - I know that Jim Somebody does vaguely what I do so I check out what he might have tagged as X and Y.
      I don't push them. I pull them. I don't consider Delicious to be a site I would use for "social" aspects, no - I instead use it for information.
      That does not make any sense. If you don't want bookmarks, then you don't need Delicious or anything like that. Except delicious isn't bookmarks. Outlook has folders and mail goes in to folders, gmail has tags and mail gets tagged. In the same way, bookmarks have a hierarchy, delicious tags do not. Have you...used...delicious before?
      Interesting... so if your social bookmarking site disappears, you are ok with your list of bookmarks going away? (snip) Especially sites or articles that might be subject to slashdotting, DDoS, government or hosting provider censorship.
      If my tagged links site goes away, I will lose the tags and subsequent associations. I'll have to look in to making my own personal backup of every single website I like - especially the ones that change constantly. Sounds like a great idea. Too bad we can't come up with some sort of data network designed to robustly handle wars, rogue governments, and overblown websites...

    17. Re:just dump it already by mysidia · · Score: 1

      I don't tweet about going to the bathroom, nor do I feel it makes any sense to push links out and let people know what I've tagged. But I might pull them - I know that Jim Somebody does vaguely what I do so I check out what he might have tagged as X and Y.

      Ok... well, you using a local flatfile, or local software application for your bookmarks certainly does not exclude you using another site for pull; obviously SOMEONE has to share bookmarks for you to be able to pull them. You probably don't have too much control of how your friends store/publish their bookmarks, either.

      You will just need to convince your friends to use the same Delicious alternative, or pulling the information could be quite a pain.

      Except delicious isn't bookmarks. Outlook has folders and mail goes in to folders, gmail has tags and mail gets tagged. In the same way, bookmarks have a hierarchy, delicious tags do not.

      The concept of "Bookmarks" is not an organizational scheme. You can find software to organize them hierarchically or not.

      I for one use bookmarks, apply tags to them, and they all get left in the Firefox "Unsorted Bookmarks" store anyways, all 3000 of them.

    18. Re:just dump it already by dAzED1 · · Score: 1

      you keep wanting me to have local bookmarks. there's something between twitter and local bookmarks, ya know :)

    19. Re:just dump it already by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, I think that's the primary use of browser bookmarks, such as those in Firefox 3

      I kinda suspect that Firefox 3 didn't invent those....

    20. Re:just dump it already by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      or the plain, non-hierarchical, nosql, functional, sites that understand that I'm dealing with more and more information each and every day

      WTF does NoSQL have to do with any of that?

  6. $30 million wasted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Social network companies seems to be the new hype. Paying $30 million for a two year company without a business model or a notion what ROI means, was a huge success for Yahoo!.

  7. bs detector pegged by frovingslosh · · Score: 2

    Sounds like they are reacting to negative feedback. You generally don't fire everyone working on something if you really expect to sell it to another company.

    My concern would be that Yahoo just announced their intention to sell the personal information on all of these users to some outside party. Am I the only one that thinks this could go bad?

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
  8. Wait, stop the bleeding by Craig+Maloney · · Score: 2

    In other words: Please stop devaluing our property! We need these users on here, or we won't make the millions, er... thousands, er... hundreds of dollars in selling it off to someone else!

    1. Re:Wait, stop the bleeding by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did Delicious really create enough revenue to sell it for hundreds of dollars? I find that shocking.

    2. Re:Wait, stop the bleeding by l0ungeb0y · · Score: 1

      True, considering they fired the entire team, very little value is left aside from the user base.

  9. It's called the "employee mobility pool" by Minwee · · Score: 3, Funny

    "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."

    The dumpster behind 701 First Avenue, Sunnydale, California is technically "outside of the company", and I'm sure that there are plenty of resources there.

    If you get there before the next pickup you may even find about six hundred recently laid-off people looking for jobs. I'm sure that some of them may want to do some "resourcing".

    1. Re:It's called the "employee mobility pool" by Colonel+Korn · · Score: 1

      "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."

      The dumpster behind 701 First Avenue, Sunnydale, California is technically "outside of the company", and I'm sure that there are plenty of resources there.

      If you get there before the next pickup you may even find about six hundred recently laid-off people looking for jobs. I'm sure that some of them may want to do some "resourcing".

      Sunnydale: http://i276.photobucket.com/albums/kk30/smgfan777/WALLPAPER%207/SUNNYDALE-HIGH.jpg

      Sunnyvale: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Yahoo_Headquarters.jpg

      --
      "I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
    2. Re:It's called the "employee mobility pool" by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 1

      Hah! So Carol Bartz IS the First Evil! I always suspected it. They couldn't hide it just by changing one letter in the town name!

    3. Re:It's called the "employee mobility pool" by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 1

      Yahoo is dusted.

      Put a stake in it, it's done.

      --
      The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
    4. Re:It's called the "employee mobility pool" by ishobo · · Score: 1

      The dumpster behind 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, California is technically "outside of the company"

      Third party removal of contents from a waste bin is illegal in California. The contents in the container are the property of the entity providing waste services, usually the government where the property resides, even if the government entity contracts with a private removal company. Also, the container is normally serviced while still on private property unlike most residential waste and a charge of trespass could be levied.

      --
      Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
  10. Simple... by msauve · · Score: 1

    It means "We think we can get something for the domain name, whoever buys it will do whatever they want with it."

    --
    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
  11. How does that happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    My start page is my.yahoo.com for almost a decade now and in all these years, I have befriended some actual Yahoo staff.

    1: Set your start page to Google.com

    2: Wait a decade

    3: ???

    4: You've befriended Google staff

    1. Re:How does that happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yea, gp smells like some crazy bullshit.

  12. Possible replacment? by bgarcia · · Score: 1
    Google Bookmarks

    It looks like it should be easy to export your bookmarks from del.icio.us and import the file into Google Bookmarks.

    --
    I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
    1. Re:Possible replacment? by Seumas · · Score: 1

      Google's bookmark service is miserable and lacking in major features. I've been really disappointed by it.

  13. What's Delicious? by FrootLoops · · Score: 1

    If you're like me and have never heard of Delicious, it lets you "...save all your bookmarks online, share them with other people, and see what other people are bookmarking." (Taken from their learn more page.) It also lets you organize your bookmarks with tags.

    1. Re:What's Delicious? by thebian · · Score: 1

      Put it another way: It's a gimmick to have to describe what your tastes and habits so that the owner of this public service can sell its profile of you to adverstisers.

      The most insidious thing about all this is to discourage learning and discovery and all change -- all so retailers can make you the target of their ads. Do we really want to exist only in order to make purchases?

    2. Re:What's Delicious? by geegel · · Score: 1

      That's sheer nonsense. I have yet to find a single ad on Delicious. On second thought, this is perhaps why Yahoo made this business decision.

      --
      right...
    3. Re:What's Delicious? by Seumas · · Score: 1

      There are no ads on Delicious and the only information they have about you is a username and email address.

    4. Re:What's Delicious? by thebian · · Score: 1

      I didn't say they sell ads. I said they sell information.

      You don't really need to have a user sign in with name, address and ssn to get some sort of user profile together from the cookies and collate that information with that of other sites, not the least of all would be Yahoo's own cookies from using its mail, tv listings, and whatever else they offer. You don't need lunatic conspiracy theories to believe someone pays good money for data on user habits on the web, whether partially anonymized or not.

      Surely, you don't think Yahoo invested all that money to be helpful to you out of the goodness of its heart, do you?

  14. I never used Del.icio or Flickr by Ilgaz · · Score: 1

    "My start page is my.yahoo.com for almost a decade now and in all these years, I have befriended some actual Yahoo staff."

    Boo hoo. Its a business decision, not a personal attack against YOU. Unless you managed to piss off any of your yahoo "friends". Yahoo was a ok service, I suppose, but there are much better. Move to one of those.If you feel entitled to a service and these players keep pissing you off by shutting down and making you have to re-arrange your life every 5 years you can always start your own service. See what its like to run a business, wouldn't that be something?

    I only use My Yahoo service and I also check Yahoo mail every 3 days or so. My actual mail provider is Fastmail.fm.

    I have absolutely no clue what are you talking about. I am just saying that by my expertise, if a word is out from Yahoo HQ (by accident or otherwise), make sure you start packing. Some people have used and still using del.icio.us in its original purpose and have massive amounts of irreplaceable personal/organised data there. I am doing a favour to them if they don't know what kind of a company and a CEO they are dealing with. They rm -rf'ed DEAD people's personal pages for God's sake.

    Much better start page? Where? Google? Unlike your type, some of us can actually find out what is really better in certain areas and who to hand our personal data to. My Yahoo is at actual Web application level now. I don't want to hand Google my personal news habits or choices. Basic as that.

  15. Oh it is basic. Act like a human by Ilgaz · · Score: 1

    My start page is my.yahoo.com for almost a decade now and in all these years, I have befriended some actual Yahoo staff.

    1: Set your start page to Google.com

    2: Wait a decade

    3: ???

    4: You've befriended Google staff

    Some of us were using Yahoo and web while you were shitting your pants and in early days it was easy to find people on IRC/Usenet before AC idiots like you came to web.

    You know Yahoo staff and even MS staff are HUMAN beings and they wonder around at the Internet right? If you don't treat people like an asshole, report issues, send feedback like a normal human being, not some sick bastard looking for AC button to satisfy yourself, they eventually become people you can call friends.

    Web is still small if you know how to behave. Especially Yahoo staff has been spread everywhere.

    1. Re:Oh it is basic. Act like a human by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow, did an AC kill your father and now you've sworn to take vengeance online? Talk about reaction being completely out of proportion. I feel sorry for those Yahoo staffers now.

  16. I will give one single URL by Ilgaz · · Score: 2

    The people I've talked to are not closing their accounts - they are exporting their bookmarks, looking for options, and waiting to see what happens. The fact that Diigo has been completely overwhelmed since the news broke makes me think something like this is happening a lot.

    I am giving this as an example how you can completely waste millions sized community in a matter of WEEKS, not even months.

    http://www.digg.com/

    Trust me the web (lets call web 2.0) has some amazing speed. Couple of mistakes, you are gone. Your company depends on some person removing you from his/her bookmarks and it takes less than a second.

  17. They are looking for a buyer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you look carefully, they are trying to monetize by selling or canceling any non-essential service. At some point they had over 70 properties with a lot of redundancy so from the pure business perspective, it makes sense. They did that successfully with Zimbra when they sold it to VMware where is now thriving with life again. Hopefully something similar will occur with Delicious.

    1. Re:They are looking for a buyer by rudy_wayne · · Score: 1

      At some point they had over 70 properties with a lot of redundancy so from the pure business perspective, it makes sense.

      What would make even more sense would be not to waste a few billion dollars buying up companies that have no real value.

  18. Opera Link by CrashNBrn · · Score: 3, Interesting
    If that's all you use delicious for, it hardly makes sense to even use the service.

    Opera Link

    Opera Link is a free service that enables data sharing between all your computers and devices. It can synchronize your bookmarks, Speed Dial, notes and other useful browser information, so they are available to you wherever you go.

    As well Opera's bookmarks include:

    Name: Yahoo! Says Delicious To Get the Boot, Not the Axe - Slashdot
    Nickname: aWord
    Address: http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/12/18/1342250
    Folder: what folder you have saved it to
    Description: Yahoo! Says Delicious To Get the Boot, Not the Axe -- article related to Index, Businesses, Technology, News, Social Networks, Software, and Yahoo!.

    1) Typing in the addressbar searches your bookmarks by any of the words/text above.
    2) Typing in the QuickFind bookmark panel similarly filters your bookmarks as you type.
    3) Typing the "Nickname" in the addressbar will launch that particular bookmark.

    If you don't want to sort your bookmarks into folders, the search function would work fine, so long as you "tagged" words into the description.

    Ability to:
    1) Export your bookmarks to plain HTML file.
    2) Import bookmarks from most other browsers: Opera, FF, IE, Safari, Konqueror.

    1. Re:Opera Link by Seumas · · Score: 1

      Great, now all I have to do is . . . only ever use Opera on every device and from every location I ever surf.

    2. Re:Opera Link by dAzED1 · · Score: 1

      what part of "I do not want bookmarks" was unclear? "nickname?" I may want to give something a dozen tags, not just one.
      Also, I didn't say that's all I used it for, just how I primarily used it. Seeing what links a friend of mine has saved as "webcomic" is a great way to find a webcomic I might like :)

  19. Good on Yahoo by Twinbee · · Score: 1

    I suggest in the last story "why can't they sell it?", and lo and behold this pops up. Great to hear the news (even though I don't use Delicious personally), and good on Yahoo.

    --
    Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
  20. Why Buy? by rudy_wayne · · Score: 1

    Why exactly did Yahoo buy Delicious in the first place? I see this a lot -- Company A buys Company B, usually for a lot of money, and then a short time later shuts down Company B or sells it for far less than they paid. And yet there never seems to be any consequences for the executives of Company A for wasting a few hundred million (or billion) dollars.

    1. Re:Why Buy? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Yahoo is a solution in search of a problem. Unfortunately, all the problems that can be solved by massive incompetence are already taken.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  21. Seriously? by blerg · · Score: 1

    They're looking at selling or offloading it?

    Who in their right mind decides to fire the entire staff and inhouse knowledge base of an asset they are looking at potentially trying to maximise the return on? Doesn't that kinda devalue the asset immensely?

    All they have currently is the domain, database and what ever infrastructure has been assigned to the project. Anyone looking at acquiring it would need either get their inhouse staff up to speed very quickly on the entire setup once they got their hands on it or go out looking to lure back the laid-off and possibly jaded staff the Yahoo has let go.

    Sounds like a whole lotta back peddling to me.

  22. I have already switched by bro1 · · Score: 1

    I have already switched to diigo.com

  23. I'll volunteer to run it by maroberts · · Score: 1

    I'm sure I have a redundant 100Mhz Pentium system somewhere I can host it on....

    --

    Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
    Karma: Chameleon

  24. OK my english is bad but... by Ilgaz · · Score: 1

    Really, what part of my post says otherwise? Yes I know Yahoo and some people in there and I absolutely know how things went downhill over these years.

    They have created/invented amazing things there without using them, they bought companies and couldn't figure what to do with them or integrate it to the gigantic Yahoo utility. They gave up Search which was really performing well for lots of users.

    I really wonder why am I the person who gets the blame for simply stating he isn't usual 'Yahoo is dead' troll while predicting something. After the geocities, I gave up theorizing things expecting some kind of logic from them. That was all I said.

  25. Great News! by whipnet · · Score: 1

    This is GREAT news. I was seriously worried as I have used del.icio.us since their beginning. One of my favorite and useful tools. The first news had me running trying to find an alternative, which there is NOT! *

  26. exported before, deleting now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I exported my delicious when the shutdown notice came out, but now that they're looking for a buyer, who may well end up just being some marketing company looking for data, I'm heading back to delete.