Farewell Del.icio.us, I hardly knew Ye...

Delicious never really did it for me - I wrote in 2008:

Del.icio.us, that early icon of the Web 2.0 movement that has to mentioned by page 11 in any book that wants "2.0 Cred", has brought out version 2.0 - to considerable interest again, it would seem. Must admit though, my usage behaviour resembles the remarks in Matthew Ingram's piece quoting one Adam Ostrow who:


....never bookmarks things any more — he either remembers something, or searches for it, or asks someone else if he can’t remember the details. It has occurred to me over the past year or so that while I religiously bookmark things, often dozens of them in a single day, I rarely go back and look them up. If I’m writing about something and I remember some details, I type them into Google and eventually track the page down.



I suspect that is true of many people who tried the service - the "hit head" of stuff you bookmark you'll put on your browser, the key papers you find you'll store yourself somewhere personal, and the rest you'll re-search for when you need it. (I also find that stuff I marked 4 years ago is pretty irrelevant now, there is a half life to web pages. Also, I got lazy - I just look at the bookmarks of other people who I know are assiduous markers )

Still, its not the death that is interesting (expiry has been predicted since at least August 2009), it's the disposal thereof. There has been a call that, rather than close it down, give itt to people who want to run it:

There are many who still use Delicious. I admit I am not one of them [That's a standard story, hence it's demise - Ed] I stopped using it shortly after Yahoo bought it. But there are lots of people who use it, just as there are people who still use MyBlogLog (I think my ashimmy.com blog still has their widget on it). Yahoo! could make lemonade out of lemons here. If they would open source these and the other properties they are killing they could garner a ton of good will from the users of these projects, not come across as the hatchet men they are being portrayed as and out Google Google even.

Heck, why not give it away for a dollar, but keep 10% of the share so if others can make it work at least you have an option on the upside?

(Update - they have clearly been reading Broadstuff, the latest decision is to try and sell Delicious. Be interesting to see if anyone will buy, if 'twere me I'd ask everyone who wants to see it live pay £24 into an escrow account for 1 year's service, and if I got 100,000 signups I'd buy the business for a dollar.