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Social Networks

Pioneering Link-Sharing Site Del.icio.us Shuts Down (thenextweb.com) 55

Long-time Slashdot reader brentlaminack writes: One of the first and best social bookmarking platforms, Del.icio.us has changed hands about four times, one was to Yahoo for >$15M. Its most recent relaunch was over a year back, which was their last blog entry. Now images are broken, little "advertisement" blocks show up with no advertisements, things seem moribund. What's the deal?
The Next Web reports: It's the end of the road for social bookmarking website del.icio.us. After almost fifteen years, the site has been acquired by rival Pinboard, and will be shuttered on June 15, when it goes into read-only mode. While the site will continue to be viewable, users won't be able to save any new bookmarks. Del.icio.us pioneered the social bookmarking paradigm. Its influence can be seen everywhere, from Reddit to Twitter...

After del.icio.us was acquired by AVOS Systems in 2011, users fled to Pinboard in droves over complaints AVOS was fundamentally changing the makeup of the site. By purchasing del.icio.us, Pinboard is able to coax the few remaining del.icio.us users to jump ship. Depending on how much Pinboard paid for the site, how many users remain, and how many users Pinboard is able to convert, this could be a financially lucrative move. A Pinboard subscription costs $11 per annum.

A late update to the article includes a quote from Pinboard founder Maciej Ceglowski. "In a statement, he said 'I am the greatest.' Ceglowski also confirmed the purchase price for del.icio.us, which was $35,000."
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Pioneering Link-Sharing Site Del.icio.us Shuts Down

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  • I won't believe it's dying until Netcraft confirms it.
  • Been a while since I've seen it. Just hopped on their homepage to look at it.. Good lord is it uninviting.
  • Poorly defined business model leads to bankruptcy. Much like how domain name squatters ended up with very little in most cases. Companies simply made up words (Pinterest, Wikipedia, etc.) -- left off a vowel (Tumblr) -- or strung words together (Facebook, YouTube, Craigslist), and saved themselves a king's ransom.
  • Good (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Saturday June 03, 2017 @11:07AM (#54542331)

    Link-sharing sites are the scourge of search results. The worst ones like Pinterest which actually "demand" that you make an account to view their content? They have to shut down.

  • by presidenteloco ( 659168 ) on Saturday June 03, 2017 @11:11AM (#54542345)

    There is supposedly a bookmarks export function in delicious, but

    "We're sorry, but due to heavy load on our database we are no longer able to offer an export function. Our engineers are working on this and we will restore it as soon as possible."

    They've been "working on this" for about 6 months now. In other words the message is BS by unscrupulous site owners.

    • by ledow ( 319597 )

      The purchase price wasn't enough to fund one engineer.

      What the hell makes you think they can afford anything in the way of maintenance, while the site is even still on the Internet.

      The lie, if anything, is the word "engineers". Who's paying those people, and what with? Because it sure wasn't the purchase price.

      • Why do you assume they disabled the "make it easy to leave this website" service due to lack of engineering resources?
    • It's a little awkward, but follow the scraping instructions found here:
      https://ringo.de-smet.name/201... [de-smet.name]

      Requires you to:
      1) use Chrome
      2) log in to your Delicious account (unless you don't have any private bookmarks)
      3) follow some short instructions
      4) wait
      5) ???
      6) profit.

  • Dice anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03, 2017 @11:16AM (#54542367)

    It's one of many sites that have sadly suffered the same fate.

    Looking at you Twitch, Slashdot Beta. Let this be a warning, don't piss off your users with stupid UI changes. There's nothing wrong with simplicity.

  • That's Dis.gust.ing

  • I'll bet Pinboard makes upwards of $0 per year on subscriptions.
  • by sunderland56 ( 621843 ) on Saturday June 03, 2017 @12:24PM (#54542609)

    Fu.cki.ng stu.pid na.me.

  • This is nonsense. There's no such thing as a "Pinboard subscription". You pay a one-off fee to sign-up.

    However, the more people who sign-up, the higher the sign-up fee gets.

    I think I paid about $5 for mine back in the day and haven't paid a cent since.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Not anymore. It's a recurring fee now. From their signup page (https://pinboard.in/signup/ )

      Pinboard charges $11 per year for a regular account, or $25 per year for archiving and full-text search

    1. 1. Is Pinboard worth the $11 / month?
    2. 2. Which sites, if any, are the modern-day equivalent of del.icio.us - an easy place to store and share one's links with a tagging taxonomy?
  • It was all goofing around, in the end, to hope for branching tubes where no Gopher would get lost. Veronica tried to help, poorly, but at least, hey, she was no Archie! Then a Mosaic of possibilities spread wide, and some cowboys tried to rein in all the cattle, Yahooing it in minuscule pens to make every stick count. That is, 'till it was clear no wall was going to dam *that* Netscaping herd, so they rather searched from a box--ExcitedLy'cos the Altavista gave them the Jeeves. But townsfolk are not so

The opossum is a very sophisticated animal. It doesn't even get up until 5 or 6 PM.

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