Delicious has been sold.

April 27, 2011 9:58 AM

After rumors late last year about the Delicious bookmarking service being shut down, it was just announced that it has been sold. It's present version will disappear in July 2011. If you want your bookmarks to be transferred to the new incarnation, you have to opt in. According to a post on the Delicious help pages: "Sorry if we've caught you by surprise. Delicious has been acquired by the founders of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen and will become part of their new Internet company, AVOS."
posted by kdern (72 comments total)

Of course, when I try to access AVOS's privacy policy, I get an "error establishing a database connection" message.
posted by blucevalo at 10:03 AM on April 27, 2011 [3 favorites]

Haven't used Delicious in years, but I'm curious to see what the new privacy policy and terms of service for opting in will be. (At the moment, neither link on that page works).
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 10:04 AM on April 27, 2011

I wrote to the guy at the ever-useful popurls and got them to de-list delicious (and replace it with pinboard) because it's essentially been taken over by spammers and is a festering wound on the face of the internet. Thanks, Yahoo! Can't wait to see what you do with to flickr.
posted by mullingitover at 10:04 AM on April 27, 2011 [3 favorites]

This makes far more sense. I simply didn't understand how the site was worth $15M-30M in December 2005 and $0 today. Just the brand and domain alone have to have been worth at least a few bucks. It's not as though Delicious is a particularly expensive service to operate on an ongoing basis. Certainly it would have been worth a bunch more before they announced they were killing it and thousands of users already migrated to replacement services like pinboard, but I suppose that logic escaped them.
posted by zachlipton at 10:05 AM on April 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

Related/Previously: Anatomy of a Crushing
posted by avoision at 10:08 AM on April 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

i am one of the many who moved over to pinboard...but it isn't as good. hopefully AVOS will continue to improve where delicious left off.
posted by Señor Pantalones at 10:09 AM on April 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

Well, I'm surprised, I'll give them that at least.
posted by box at 10:10 AM on April 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

Wonder what kind of changes they'll bring. For my part, I don't use bookmarking services as discovery services... I use them as bookmarking services. Just stay online and I couldn't care less what extra features you have.
posted by d1rge at 10:16 AM on April 27, 2011 [10 favorites]

I am one of the very happy people that moved over to Pinboard. It's really the best service out there now (I tried a couple of others before I made the move, including the wretchedly-named Diigo), and have been nothing but satisfied with the service. I also like supporting (I believe) a single developer who makes A Cool Thing™, as opposed to another WEB2-UH-OH shop.
posted by jivadravya at 10:17 AM on April 27, 2011 [4 favorites]

Oh yahoo. What can't you drive into the ground and lie about driving into the ground and lie about lying?
posted by boo_radley at 10:20 AM on April 27, 2011 [3 favorites]

I shifted to Pinboard (go Maciej!) and Diigo, and am largely happy with that combo. I do miss Delicious' social features and established network; fie on Yahoo! for gutting it.

Avos' site is still down. Not the best sign.
posted by doctornemo at 10:30 AM on April 27, 2011

Ditto: moved to Pinboard. Deleted my del.icio.us account just now.

What a waste, Yahoo.
posted by gen at 10:39 AM on April 27, 2011

Pinboard is occasional proof that you can get something by directly paying a modest fee that you can never satisfactorily get if somebody else is paying for it. I am using Pinboard far more than I had ever used delicious, and while it's lacking most of the social aspects that made Del so marketable, failing to be an attractive takeover target could also help it be self-sustaining without having to compromise on its goals.
posted by ardgedee at 10:41 AM on April 27, 2011 [3 favorites]

I may be an odd one, but I switched to Google Bookmarks, and can't love it more than I already do. Just one more piece of my life Google gets to index.
posted by deezil at 10:43 AM on April 27, 2011 [2 favorites]

My experience with Trunk.ly has been decent so far too (though really I just use it as a backup of my Pinboard account).
posted by Mr. Palomar at 10:46 AM on April 27, 2011

I authorized the move of my delicious account. It works, it's nice & clean, and I've always been happy with it. Might as well see where it goes from here.
posted by statolith at 10:49 AM on April 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

yup, export from delicious and groovin on pinboard for a few weeks now - they have at least one non-delicious feature ('add note') that I'm getting addicted to and REALLY wish they would put into the their API so it would go mobile.
posted by victors at 10:52 AM on April 27, 2011

I used to love Delicious. Now I love Pinboard. I use it throughout the day, just about every day. I've moved on.

But maybe I'll opt in just to see what happens to Delicious...
posted by limeonaire at 10:54 AM on April 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

For what it's worth, the last time there was a delicious shutdown scare the best replacement I found was 1R7. Lightweight, very similar interface, can import delicious bookmarks, free.
posted by reptile at 11:09 AM on April 27, 2011 [3 favorites]

Hurley and Chen have mabillions. If they waited a few years they'd probably be able to buy all of Yahoo. I think they're just screwing around and seeing if they can flip a company they created in a morning over bagels.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 11:23 AM on April 27, 2011 [2 favorites]

In similar if not exactly related news, Friendster's deleting everyone's pictures and blogs and stuff at the end of next month. Remember Friendster? It was like MySpace before Facebook was MySpace?
posted by infinitywaltz at 11:27 AM on April 27, 2011 [3 favorites]

I see no real reason to move back to delicious when there's no real way of telling how it's going to end up (my prediction: flipped for profit and sold on within two years). Pinboard works great and has reliable customer support - that's all that's needed, and I was happy to pay for it.
posted by saturnine at 11:35 AM on April 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

In similar if not exactly related news, Friendster's deleting everyone's pictures and blogs and stuff at the end of next month. Remember Friendster? It was like MySpace before Facebook was MySpace?

what's myspace?
posted by victors at 11:37 AM on April 27, 2011 [2 favorites]

I authorized the move of my delicious account. It works, it's nice & clean, and I've always been happy with it. Might as well see where it goes from here.

Me too. And they haven't made any changes to Delicious either.
posted by Rarebit Fiend at 11:40 AM on April 27, 2011

What's friendster?
posted by desjardins at 11:46 AM on April 27, 2011

the mess called AVOS TOS is now up. this does look like a company they cranked out over bagels and latte.
posted by liza at 11:47 AM on April 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

Question for other bookmark service users: I too love the plain ol' bookmark aspect, and mostly ignore the social stuffs. However, one thing that I loved about (the old) del.icio.us was the tag prediction stuff. Originally a project by the eSheep guy, then part of the official bookmarklet, it would suggest some tags for you based on other users' tags and some basic content analysis. While I often needed to add a few extra, it made comprehensive tagging almost free and entirely pleasant.

So, the question: do any of these other services offer something similar? Happy to use either a native or third party solution, but it seems like delicious.com doesn't really do it any more anyhow. Please hope me.
posted by freebird at 11:52 AM on April 27, 2011

I have yet to find a satisfactory replacement for delicious. Oh sure, tons of places to save bookmarks, but it was that and social features that were equally important to me. I'll authorize the move of my data to the new company, but I'm not hopeful yet either.
posted by asciident at 11:53 AM on April 27, 2011

I like bagels.
posted by entropicamericana at 11:54 AM on April 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

> Friendster's deleting everyone's pictures and blogs and stuff at the end of next month.

From the link: "Friendster is making the changes under the guise of reinventing themselves as a service focused on “entertainment and fun”..."

Because nothing says "entertainment and fun" like "I accidentally the user data."

More seriously, Americans like to be scornful of social media that's not Facebook. They're all flashes in the pan otherwise. We tend to ignore the social sites that are holding their own pretty well in other parts of the world (Nate in South Korea, Orkut in Brazil, whatever's going on in China...). If somebody's decided that Friendster's going to be self-sustaining if it scales back and focuses on a smaller, comparatively insular market, it's as likely to be a canny business move as a tech industry flail.
posted by ardgedee at 11:54 AM on April 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

And here I though Chad was just going to focus on his clothing line.
posted by wildcrdj at 12:02 PM on April 27, 2011

freebird, if I'm understanding what you're asking for correctly, Pinboard does it. It's a smaller pool of users, though, so it doesn't have tags for every site on the internet like Delicious did.
posted by roll truck roll at 12:13 PM on April 27, 2011

So, the question: do any of these other services offer something similar? Happy to use either a native or third party solution, but it seems like delicious.com doesn't really do it any more anyhow. Please hope me.

I'm a heavy Pinboard user and I can confirm that it exists.
posted by special-k at 12:15 PM on April 27, 2011

yep, Pinboard has tag suggesting, and the browser popup thingie has tag auto-complete. also, I've become rather fond of PinDroid, which also has tag suggesting.
posted by epersonae at 12:27 PM on April 27, 2011

In similar if not exactly related news, Friendster's deleting everyone's pictures and blogs and stuff at the end of next month.

Dear god. Please let this mean I will stop getting emails from a completely unused zombie Friendster account I set up ages ago, and cannot get the emails to stop because I have no idea what my account password is.

If those will just stop, I'll be a small percentage happier.
posted by hippybear at 12:30 PM on April 27, 2011

I refuse to hand over my data to any company whose TOS I can't read.
posted by immlass at 12:39 PM on April 27, 2011

(Didn't read, maybe. Can't read, no.)
posted by immlass at 12:39 PM on April 27, 2011

Ding dong, AVOS calling.
posted by Old'n'Busted at 12:42 PM on April 27, 2011

Wow, is it just me, or do the Avos terms of service look like someone ate the internet and then threw up? It's all weird symbols and random capslock attack.
posted by badmoonrising at 12:47 PM on April 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

Oh, thanks! I was *this* close to switching to pinboard a while back, but didn't think it did tag suggesting. Excellent! Delicious has really started to annoy me and do a bad job. Pinboard here I come.

There is maybe an interesting story here about the web growing up: I'll take a reasonably priced option over a free one every time these days.
posted by freebird at 12:51 PM on April 27, 2011 [3 favorites]

If anyone's still looking for a free option, I'm happy with Springpad.
posted by cereselle at 1:58 PM on April 27, 2011 [2 favorites]

Opted in, just to see what they do with it. But I'm already just using Diigo now.
posted by zarq at 2:15 PM on April 27, 2011

Hmmm I wonder if they're going to keep bookmarks from people who choose not to opt-in...
posted by stratastar at 2:18 PM on April 27, 2011

Also, out of curiosity, what do you guys look for when you read over a TOS?
posted by stratastar at 2:22 PM on April 27, 2011

I'm (continuing to be) sorry to see everyone splintering off in a million different directions. I'm sticking with Delicious till the bitter end!
posted by wintersweet at 2:55 PM on April 27, 2011 [2 favorites]

Yeah, worrying about some random derpy company having access to my account full of fanfic porn bookmarks that I opened under a ridiculously fake name is not super high on my list of priorities right now. I will stick with delicious until they implode while continuing to do weekly backups to pinboard and diigo, I guess.
posted by elizardbits at 3:11 PM on April 27, 2011

what do you guys look for when you read over a TOS?

The "I accept" button, of course.
posted by Zed at 3:14 PM on April 27, 2011 [11 favorites]

This is nice, but I went to Pinboard and I'm not changing again.
posted by tommasz at 3:16 PM on April 27, 2011 [2 favorites]

Dear god. Please let this mean I will stop getting emails from a completely unused zombie Friendster account I set up ages ago, and cannot get the emails to stop because I have no idea what my account password is.

Yep, I too was pleased to hear the word "Friendster" immediately followed by "are deleting everything"; I'd prefer my ancient account to be gone, but I don't even know what username I had there, let alone password. Whatever email address it was tied to, won't exist anymore (or won't be mine, at least!).

I never got into delicious. Can't say I grok the logic of giving your "online bookmarking is better than local bookmarks" service a name I can't remember (de.licio.us? nope. deli.cio.us? nope...) unless I, er, use a local bookmark. Is that a whoosh for them or me? Still, speaking of yahoo's amazing track record, I'm more puzzled as to how/why flickr is still the dominant(?) photo site.
posted by Slyfen at 3:25 PM on April 27, 2011

Oh. It's delicious.com apparently? Don't I feel stupid now. Afraid my rather rare comment frequency here means I always forget there's no edit or delete and I really need to think a little more than I normally do before pressing submit!
posted by Slyfen at 3:27 PM on April 27, 2011

Slyfen, it's okay. It was originally del.icio.us, (which was impossible to remember,) before it became delicious.com. So you're good. ;)
posted by zarq at 3:29 PM on April 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

Do any of these have good browser plugins? Because that's really what I like about Delicious. I'm too old and cranky to care about the social aspects.
posted by me & my monkey at 4:28 PM on April 27, 2011

MetaFilter: I'm too old and cranky to care about the social aspects.
posted by hippybear at 4:33 PM on April 27, 2011

Do any of these have good browser plugins?
I moved to Pinboard when Delicious was announced to sunset.
There is a decent plugin for Pinboard bookmarking in Chrome.
posted by Prince_of_Cups at 4:48 PM on April 27, 2011

In similar if not exactly related news, Friendster's deleting everyone's pictures and blogs and stuff at the end of next month. Remember Friendster? It was like MySpace before Facebook was MySpace?

I'm pretty sure my Friendster account no longer exists or at least the email address/password associated with it is lost to history, but... I met my husband on Friendster. This makes me a little (very, very little) bit wistful.
posted by misskaz at 4:53 PM on April 27, 2011

I kinda stopped using Delicious once the front page turned completely into SEO spam and it became useless for finding new and interesting things... and I guess because I got lazy about bookmarking in general. So I wasn't very concerned when its death was announced. Now that it is being revived, maybe I'll try to use it again, and try to avoid ever looking at the front page.
posted by Jimbob at 6:31 PM on April 27, 2011

FUCK YOU YOU'LL PRY DELICIOUS FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS YOU BASTARDS
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:41 PM on April 27, 2011 [2 favorites]

freebird: " There is maybe an interesting story here about the web growing up: I'll take a reasonably priced option over a free one every time these days."

I agree. I've been thinking a lot about that "You're not the customer. You're the product" line. I think the Internet can do so much more than sell personal data and ad space, and I'm willing to pay a developer for a good product.
posted by roll truck roll at 7:26 PM on April 27, 2011

I think the Internet can do so much more than sell personal data and ad space, and I'm willing to pay a developer for a good product.

And that's why Flickr is (was?) so damned good. And why I can't understand why Twitter doesn't try doing the same thing, although by now it may be too late for it to try. Seriously - $15 a year, in order to retain an archive of your tweets and be able to post, say, more than 200 tweets a month? People wouldn't still be bitching about how they need to "monetize", and the dick-bar would never have been foisted upon us.
posted by Jimbob at 8:06 PM on April 27, 2011

The rumor is the AVOS guys are building a search engine and want tagged URLs as data.
posted by Ad hominem at 8:13 PM on April 27, 2011

If it's too late for Twitter to try doing the same thing, I suspect that's largely because of paid Twitter smartphone apps.
posted by box at 8:18 PM on April 27, 2011

"The rumor is the AVOS guys are building a search engine and want tagged URLs as data."

HOW DID YAHOO NOT THINK TO DO THIS?! HOW!
posted by stratastar at 8:41 PM on April 27, 2011

stratastar: " HOW DID YAHOO NOT THINK TO DO THIS?! HOW!"

Wasn't that always the idea of Delicious? That once it got a critical mass of users, you'd have this great, user-generated catalog of the Internet. It's just that with the exception of a few "in-the-know" tags, it wasn't quite as useful of a catalog as you might hope for it to be. Not nearly as useful as Google.
posted by roll truck roll at 10:19 PM on April 27, 2011

HOW DID YAHOO NOT THINK TO DO THIS?! HOW!

Yahoo! is an anti-incubator.
posted by ryoshu at 10:25 PM on April 27, 2011 [2 favorites]

"There is maybe an interesting story here about the web growing up: I'll take a reasonably priced option over a free one every time these days."

That's the thing about Flickr, though. Many have decided that Flickr is a great service, and they pay yearly to use the site on a pro level. And, yet, I can't help but fear for its future. If the site is a relatively sure thing (and if those in charge, developers, and customer service even pretended to give a damn about paid members' opinions and feedback), then it's worth the price. I realize that nothing CAN be a sure thing, but at the very least the people in charge can attempt to consider their customers' desires a priority. Anyway, just because a website is charging a fee to use its services doesn't mean that it won't turn around and stab everyone in the back. I pay for Flickr, and I'm satisfied with the site as it is. But, there's this fear that one day I'll log on and they'll have changed everything.. destroying all the work that I've put into my photo archives and certainly not reimbursing dissatisfied customers. This is why I think long and hard before I pay for a site. It's really hard to trust that sites will still exist a few years from now AND retain the features I want and have paid for. Flickr's already backsliding into crappiness and I'm worried about the mismanagement that Yahoo! has shown to it and other websites it snapped up.

Incidentally, I'm also a VERY loyal Delicious user. I've been on the site since it really started up. I don't care AT ALL about the social elements. I use it as a straight-up minimalistic bookmarking system that keeps my bookmark folder from getting clogged up with thousands of bookmarks that I don't need to keep locally on my computer. It works. It loads fast. It's perfect. There's NO other site that can compare with the features that make Delicious my preferred bookmarking service. I'm hoping this AVOS thing works out. Just as I would be devastated to lose my Flickr archive (of my photos, favorites, and contacts), I would/will be devastated to lose all my Delicious archives. My Delicious account represents many, many hours (understatement) of hard work getting it to be just right, and I will be unhappy to lose it.
posted by Mael Oui at 10:48 PM on April 27, 2011 [4 favorites]

Nice: Just received an e-mail from Yahoo! about the sale, even though I deleted my d.i.u account weeks ago (THIS WILL DELETE ALL YOUR DATA!!!), as I have been using Pinboard for ages anyway.

If you deleted all my data, how come you still think my e-mail address belongs to a Delicious user, Yahoo?
posted by lodev at 12:47 AM on April 28, 2011

Whatever happened to that open source version, delirious or whatever it was called?
posted by Canageek at 5:59 AM on April 28, 2011

lodev - Exactly. I'm positive I deleted all my Delicious account info the last time they sent me one of these WE SOLD YOUR SHIT emails. Crossing fingers they actually do it this time.
posted by jeffmik at 6:58 AM on April 28, 2011

I should probably try pinboard, but I'm very happy with Diigo. It works just as well for what I do as delicious, if not better. And I've been automatically backing up all my links to delicious as well, just in case. Guess I'll just let that backup go now.
posted by threeturtles at 9:35 AM on April 28, 2011

Is there a pinboard equivalent to searching delicious.com/popular/[tag] ?
posted by AceRock at 1:03 PM on April 28, 2011

Not that I know of, but you can see all of the bookmarks with a particular tag like this:
http://pinboard.in/t:whatever

I don't know, but I would imagine that this sort of feature will become prioritized when/if Pinboard reaches the kind of mass of users that would make it useful.
posted by roll truck roll at 1:46 PM on April 28, 2011

My shared, work & project-related delicious account? I'll go ahead and transfer that to AVOS, sure. My personal delicious account? I think I will export this and look elsewhere, maybe pinboard.
posted by bennett being thrown at 2:36 PM on April 28, 2011