Del.ic.io.us to Suffer the Fate of Bloglines?

There have been rumors running around for the past few days about Yahoo shutting Delicious down.  According the TechCrunch post, the rumors started with layoffs at Yahoo and a leaked internal slide showing Delicious (along with MyBlogLog, Yahoo Picks, Alta Vista, Yahoo Bookmarks, Yahoo Buzz) planned to go into the “sunset.”

The same TechCrunch post has been recently updated with information from the Delicious blog stating that Delicious will not be shut down but will be available to other companies. 

 “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.”

So it looks like the demise of Delicious is similar to Bloglines.  Now Bloglines has been picked up by Merchant Circle, but the relaunch of that platform seems to have some problems as one librarian noted.  We will have to see how Delicious fares.  It is interesting to see how social networking has evolved and changed and some of the beginning social systems like Bloglines and Delicious are no longer as relevant as they once were, Twitter and Facebook now rule the roost.  It may sound odd but it reminds me a bit of the gas guzzling SUV days smacking head on to high gas prices.  In 1992 the Hummer was hot, before he was the Governator, Arnold drove one around in the stop and go traffic of California.  About 15 years later the once popular car line couldn’t even be sold to a Chinese automaker.

Let’s hope Delicious and Bloglines do not go the way of the Hummer, however it doesn’t look good for either product.  My guess is that they will eventually die or somebody will pick them up and figure out how to morph them into some new social product that we all have to use.  Don’t be shocked if someday 10-15 years from now even Twitter and Facebook face the same fate as Delicious and Bloglines. 

I was an avid Bloglines user, but now days I am Netvibes person who happens to rely more on Twitter for information gathering and Facebook for inforamtion distribution.  I admit I never quite got the hang of Delicious.  I am not sure why, organizing my online life would seem to fall right in line with my librarian state of mind.

For those of you who are huge Delicious people who are taking this news hard or are freaking out over all of your tags, never fear the tech people online are already listing the “best” Delicious alternatives.

Here are links to some:

5 thoughts on “Del.ic.io.us to Suffer the Fate of Bloglines?”

  1. I am frantic. I could never organize my bookmarks and I totally rely on Delicious. Our libraries use it a lot for a network for our patrons. I am already looking at alternatives and Diig seems to be a fair choice. Maybe it will be better and I can stop going nuts. : )

  2. I always preferred Furl to Delicious because I found the tagging more user-friendly, but switched to Delicious because that seemed to be the most popular choice, after Furl’s demise. When I learned that Bloglines would be closing, I immediately switched everything over to Google Reader–then I learned that Bloglines would not be closing, but by then, I had switched everything over, so why go back? Well, I’m used to Google running my life now, so I’ll probably go with Google Bookmarks regardless of Delicious’s fate.

  4. I have two Delicious accounts. One is for work stuff and I have almost nothing saved there because, like Amy, I figure I can find it again. The other, though, is for cooking and crafts. Mostly, I use it to save recipes, so I KNOW I can find it again – there are lots of similar sounding recipes out there. I’m looking at alternatives, but I’m not jumping yet.

  5. I’ve never embraced Delicious. Just not worth my time. If I find something once, I can usually find it again. Of course, I never used the favorites on my browsers a lot either.

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