Yahoo! Buys del.icio.us 210
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"
simpy (Score:5, Informative)
Re:simpy (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:simpy (Score:2)
Re:simpy (Score:5, Informative)
Re:simpy (Score:2)
Re:simpy (Score:2)
Accounts (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Accounts (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Accounts (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
And... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And... (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:And... (Score:5, Insightful)
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... (Score:2, Insightful)
This alone is a significant blow. And I don't mean the name "Yahoo", I mean "Yahoo!" -- having an exclamation mark as a part of a name is both awful and it confuses people a lot.
Even the header of this very
Re:And... (Score:2)
If you aren't that disgusted, install Yahoo toolbar ( toolbar.yahoo.com ) and check what yahoo does. Yahoo NEVER did such intrusive crap or they wouldn't be alive today with PAYING MEMBERS.
I would not reply but the stuff you said is carried by SPYWARE vendors only. Claria/Gator sued people saying half of stuff you said.
I used Yahoo toolbar non stop for 3-4 years while using windows. Never, ever seen anything wrong.
At least Yahoo will NOT index every si
Re:And... (Score:2)
Umm... really? What about this [iht.com]?
Google blocks sites at the request of the Chinese goverment, but they still haven't turned people in like Yahoo has.
Re:And... (Score:2, Informative)
Yahoo Is Evil (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:Yahoo Is Evil (Score:2)
Re:Yahoo Is Evil (Score:2)
Re:Yahoo Is Evil (Score:2)
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.
What worries me most about this seemingly neverending digital progress is that it depends on the fickleness of youth and their spending patterns.
This won't go on forever, as even kids tend to realize the cost/benefit reality.
I see a trend (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
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 d
Re:I see a trend (Score:2)
That doesn't make a lot of sense. Podcasting is already extremely popular, and is very useful in the real world.
but by the talk you'd think we're soon going to listen to every dweeb with a microphone)
I've never heard anyone say that. Who are the people saying these things? There are many very professional Podcasts, plenty from major media organizations world-wide. Using a podcast does not mean you have to listen to "any dweeb with a
Re:I see a trend (Score:2)
That doesn't mean there's much money in it. Podcasting right now is a fad, with tons of people trying to make a quick buck off of the popularity. A handfull will actually succeed, probably using very traditional business models, a few more will get bought up by BigCo, and the vast majority will fall by the wayside, wondering why The Revolution didn't last.
Re:I see a trend (Score:2)
Why should I care? I'm not talking about money. Many of the best things in life are unprofitable.
Podcasting right now is a fad, with tons of people trying to make a quick buck off of the popularity
I don't quite see it this way. All the podcasts I use are by people not expecting to make money - or from existing radio stations which are community-run - as a convenience for their listeners. I don't see many people thinking they will make money directly from podcast
There is more smoke than there is fire. (Score:2)
The guy you replied to was, so I just assumed you were.
I can't really speak for him, but I wasn't trying to take the stance that podcasting itself is "unsuccessful" or is going to fade away any time soon. People will continue to do it as long as it is doable, like most things, popular and unpopular. But popularity doesn't magically turn into profit, and profit is the most common way to measure success.
To clarify: the original suggestion was that most podcasti
Re:I see a trend (Score:2)
How do you know? What makes you say this? The local radio station I listen to podcasts most of their talk shows. The station says the podcasts are extremely popular. The audience for that station is typically NOT composed of geeks.
among those early adopters willing to embrace a new and awkward technology temporarily, and the classic mistake of drawing an endless growth curve is repeated.
1. What is "awkward" about podcasting? It appeals to
Re:I see a trend (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:2, Interesting)
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 (Score:3, Funny)
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.)
Re:I see a trend (Score:3, Insightful)
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 wa
Re:I see a trend (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:2)
And the owners will likely now be financially independent and free to experiment/tinker with whatever they like.
Re:I see a trend (Score:2)
Actually, they couldn't have without a business model. They would have gone dry and been scooped up in less than a year. I think getting bought by BigCo had been the plan for del.icio.us for a long time now. Yeah, they could have run ads or something and maybe covered costs, but from day one they were more valuable to Yahoo or Google or Microsoft or somebody else than they would have been independent.
That isn't to say there's no room for startups to compet
Re:I see a trend (Score:2)
No I won't, because new startups come every day to the web, and many get bought up precisely because they are players. Been going this way for 10 years now.
I didin't mean they were forced or anything. I meant they have to be huge in order to be succesful.
So if Delicious wasn't successful, why did Yahoo buy them?
Re:I see a trend (Score:2)
Of course this is the trend. It's happened in every major industry since time immemorial. That's how we came about the anti-trust laws, after Big Oil sucked up smaller companies and competition narrowed to a handful of oil barons who could set market prices pretty much at will.
Oil. Automobiles. Aircraft. When some segment of industry first starts out, everyone has a bright idea and tries to exploit it to make money and grow their company. Eventually, companies merge as they find advantages in buying up th
Re:I see a trend (Score:2)
Re:I see a trend (Score:2)
Re:I see a trend (Score:2)
All you're seeing here are exit strategies - people have built something that works, or appears to, so now they're cashing in. That just tells you that they're just another business - it's the money that they care about. Thinking othe
bad.for.us (Score:2)
Re:I see a trend (Score:2)
Scoop: at least on
Anyway it was meant funny. In fact, it is not so much funny but this is certainly not a troll.
del.icio.us and Katrina PeopleFinder (Score:5, Informative)
The deal may be delicious... (Score:5, Funny)
Flickr.icio.us, anyone? (Score:2, Insightful)
Tagging vs. Searching (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:2)
Re:Tagging vs. Searching (Score:2)
Re:Tagging vs. Searching (Score:2)
It's not hard to imagine them using tags to
Re:Tagging vs. Searching (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Tagging vs. Searching (Score:2)
Not only that, but last month Google also quietly added tagging capabilities [techcrunch.com] to search histories.
Re:Tagging vs. Searching (Score:2)
That's not a dichotomy, it's a single system. Tag-search is one side of the spectrum and heirarchical folders is the other. You create and search tags. "Looking" at a tag is just a simple search.
Tag-search systems will take over as the file/data-storage paradigm in a whole lot of areas. We're just seeing t
Re:Tagging vs. Searching (Score:2)
Re:Tagging vs. Searching (Score:2)
Yet another free service that'll become useless? (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Yet another free service that'll become useless (Score:3, Informative)
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
Yeah sure. (Score:2)
You USians are very funny.
Re:Yet another free service that'll become useless (Score:2)
And even though they bitched about a number of things, when there were simple solutions (like, "Try Google," or, "Try FireFox"),
Re:Yet another free service that'll become useless (Score:2)
Nobody including spyware developers could dare to analyse everything. We attack them since they monitor the URL user is on, Google becomes "hero" while it monitors every single private mail.
It is a karma killer to bitch about Google and their dark practices but enough is enough. People started to act like cult members or something.
They want the del.icio.us user base (Score:2, Insightful)
They're buying del.icio.us for the community not the technology.
Re:They want the del.icio.us user base (Score:2)
Alternatives? (Score:4, Interesting)
Nice! (Score:2)
delete account (Score:2)
all your base... (Score:3, Funny)
Didnt yahoo fuck up flickr bad? (Score:2)
Based off past experience with Yahoo .... (Score:2)
Every time I've used a service which Yahoo has come on board to, it becomes unuseable crap. And shorly after they come on board I end up stopping using it because it is no longer as good as it once was.
Which is really too bad, because I was beginning to find del.icio.us exceedingly useful to me. Now I'll probably have to export all of my bookmarks and see wh
Re:Based off past experience with Yahoo .... (Score:2)
Might as well export all your bookmarks to Google Bookmark BETA, coming to a Web 2.0-compliant browser to you sometime in the next yearosphere.
Re:Based off past experience with Yahoo .... (Score:2)
Truthfully, the bookmarks others are making aren't the most useful aspect of del.icio.us for me.
The ability to organize my crap with whatever tags I like, organize them into bundles, and then access them from anyplace are what makes it useful to me. I've managed to bring order to a collection of bookmar
Re:Based off past experience with Yahoo .... (Score:2)
Delicious and Backpack do not serve the same purpose, but the latter is still nice for managing information. Neither Yahoo nor Google have purchased it as of right now, so you don't have to worry about annoying Fla
Tagging: So hot right now (Score:2)
Interesting that this transaction went down in the same week as the tag-based dating site, Consumating was acquired by C|Net. Both were tag-based, and both had been in business for only 12 months or less - very similar situations to Flickr. Big companies are becoming much more aggressive about acquiring promising startups early - and it makes a lot of sense. These acquisitions are in the mid-to-low 7 figures, a bargin compared to trying to buy later for 100 million or more.
New name (Score:2)
My del.icio.us Clone (Score:2)
Great, now they can require NS4.7 on macs! (Score:2)
In Other News... (Score:3, Funny)
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? (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
del.icio.us apps for macosx (Score:2, Informative)
Alternatively, if you're just looking for fast local searching, there's delimport [ianhenderson.org], which periodically sucks down your del.icio.us bookmarks and indexes them with Spotlight.
Re:del.icio.us apps for macosx (Score:2)
Re:del.icio.us apps for macosx (Score:2)
Re:del.icio.us apps for macosx (Score:2)
http://dietrich.ganx4.com/foxylicious/ [ganx4.com]
Re:del.icio.us apps for macosx (Score:2)
Does anyone know how much Yahoo paid? (Score:2)
No (Score:2)
Please, don't let them buy all the good free stuff available.
Oh my god no. (Score:2)
Fascinating social experiment (Score:3, Insightful)
(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...
Yeah, Right (Score:2)
Yet - they get how to cover your PC with crap. Very social of them.
Oh, wait, maybe that was "socialist"...as in "we own your desktop and your browser"...
Re: (Score:2)
Yahoo does a real ethical thing! (Score:2)
I noticed they upgraded their search to much more personalized stuff. "Myweb"
Also they added public bookmarks feature: "Myweb 2.0"
While thinking one of the huge companies stole enthusiast created things as del.icio.us, I heard this story.
They could move along as in fact, "online bookmarks" is a yahoo invented feature back in '98 or earlier. Everyone who uses yahoo toolbar knows it. The "public" feature was invente
Re:So... (Score:2)
Re:So... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:So... (Score:2)
Re:So... (Score:2)
I think i can get dthree_88971245 for myself. Cool.
Re:Slashdot acquired by SCO (Score:2)
Re:Bubblicious!! (Score:2)
Re:Why not delicio.us? (Score:2)
Re:Why not delicio.us? (Score:2)
$ grep \.icio\.us$
ausp.icio.us
avar.icio.us
capr.icio.us
del.icio.us
inausp.icio.us
injud.icio.us
jud.icio.us
mal.icio.us
meretr.icio.us
off.icio.us
pern.icio.us
susp.icio.us
v.icio.us
Re:whats wrong with our kids? (Score:2)
Hey, now that 1337 has been abandoned by it's generation, we old farts are picking it up. It's actually easy to standardize it as a code, with tools like Firefox's https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.ph p ?id=770&application=firefox [mozilla.org] leetspeak plugin - you just highlight text and click to encode/decode! Handy for getting past (speak o' th' devil) Yahoo's Fascistic "indecency" filter, yet clear to all those who can read it. Ironic, no?
Re: (Score:2)
Flamebait??? (Score:2)
You go, daeley. Your post was simply..... Scrumtrulescent.