

YouTube Founders Acquire Delicious From Yahoo - ChrisArchitect
http://www.avos.com/delicious-press-release/

======
codeup
Please don't get me wrong, but I never understood what "social" bookmarking is
useful for. As long as my supposed ignorance persists, I'm sorry to crash the
party with a simple question: why is Delicious relevant?

Assuming many or most here think it _is_ relevant, it should be possible to
respond to my question reasonably, without buzzwords and with only moderate
downvoting.

~~~
asolove
It's funny, I started to write a reply explaining my love of Delicious. But
the more I articulated the reasons, the more I realized I loved what it was,
and don't really use it anymore.

1\. Before browsers could sync my bookmarks across multiple computers, posting
them to delicious was the best way to have access to them anywhere.

2\. Before instapaper let me save articles to read later, Delicious was a
great way to have a tagged backlog of things to explore whenever I have
freetime.

3\. Before Twitter, the best way to know what your favorite developers or
designers were thinking about was to follow what they were bookmarking on
Delicious.

4\. Before HN, looking at the usage of tags and stories per tag helped me
figure out what technologies or topics were growing in popularity and find out
what to read first about them.

~~~
superkarn
There's something to be said about focusing on one thing and doing it well.
(Not to say Delicious didn't do any/all of those well.)

~~~
stdbrouw
"Not to say Delicious didn't do any/all of those well." Then what exactly
_are_ you saying? :-)

~~~
code_duck
I think he's saying that the 'focusing on one thing' part is important.
Regardless of how well you do a task, if you offer many services, you might
not come to be associated as strongly with a particular task in the consumer's
mind. Thus, when they come to think of that function, specialists come to mind
rather than the you, the generalist.

That's how the theory goes, anyway.

------
Timothee
"AVOS is a new Internet company, led by the founders of YouTube, Chad Hurley
and Steve Chen. AVOS is located in San Mateo, California"

I'm surprised I hadn't heard of that company before. I thought these two were
still working at YouTube. Are they?

"YouTube (…) which was acquired by Google 18 months later for $1.76B"

I was surprised of seeing that as well, since the price I have seen everywhere
else was $1.65B. I guess they know that better than anyone else but why the
difference?

~~~
spicyj
Must be someone who didn't know the difference between G$ and Gi$ (1024 vs.
1000)…

~~~
spicyj
Oh come on, 1.76 G$ = 1.64 Gi$; they're remarkably close to the other values.

------
mixmax
around 14 days ago I updated my browser to firefox 4, and all my delicious
bookmarks that were in tag clouds on my deliciousbar disappeared - silently
deleted. They weren't to be found anywhere, not in my tagcloud, not in my
history not on delicious site. I e-mailed them but didn't get a reply, and now
it seems I've lost years worth of bookmarks that were important to me.

I'll never use delicious again.

~~~
RyanKearney
Google syncs all your bookmarks if you use Chrome. I've yet to lose any.
Something to think about.

~~~
seldo
Chrome's bookmark sync is not foolproof yet -- I've never lost a bookmark, but
I get dupes all the time (usually after renaming a bookmark: the old name
comes back as a duplicate).

~~~
pers3us
Very true, and don't bother to use xmarks with google chrome sync. It will
keep on duplicating every time. Making multiple copy of the bookmarks.

------
mckoss
(I've been running social bookmarking site, Faves.com, since 2005).

I still think there is a largely unmet need that fits into the "Social
Bookmarking" niche. But I don't think "Social" is the best way to think about
it.

As an avid user (of Faves.com, in my case) - I use it for (in order of
importance):

    
    
        1. Pack Rat - I don't ever want to loose a link I
           found interesting enough to want to recall later.
        2. Personal Search - I need a great search interface
           to quickly find anything I've saved (search across
           tags, and comment text).
    

The unmet need - NOT "Social" in the sense that I want to share links with my
"friends" - but, rather, topic-based "Communities". Help me interact with
people who share the same interests. This is more in the vein of Hacker News
or Reddit. But I don't have any one service (Faves, included) that do this
"right" yet.

I think I want a well integrated system that spans:

    
    
        - Personal Bookmarking
        - Personal Knowledge Base w/ Search
        - Topic Forums
        - Commenting system
        - Micro-blogging/publishing

~~~
nostromo
I agree. Back in the days before HN, I would often use Delicious as my
aggregator of choice. I would follow specific tags (webdev, informatics, etc.)
in my RSS reader and I would find amazing resources all the time. In
retrospect, each tag could be similar to a subreddit, but with much higher
quality links. These topic-based communities as you put it are much more
interesting than, say, seeing what links my cousin shared on FB.

------
micheljansen
I just discovered this when I tried to bookmark something on Delicious. I am
positively surprised that they actually _asked_ me if I wanted to give my
personal information to Avos. This is the way it should be.

One critical note though, I went to <http://blog.delicious.com/> expecting to
read about this, but there is nothing about the acquisition there. If this
does not warrant a blog post, what is a blog for?

~~~
danohuiginn
I felt the same. the sheen vanished for me when the email contained the text:

"Originating IP address: 127.0.0.1"

oops!

~~~
mathrawka
yphp has a different function to get the remote address as the normal methods
don't work since it is behind a load balancer and using ytunnel (modified
stunnel for yahoo).

Guess they forgot to use the proper function :)

------
joeyh
Probably a lot of historical users will never tick the box to allow their data
to be transferred, and that data will fall off the web, or at best be
archived. That would happen even if there was not a time limit for users to
take action; June is likely the time limit. There has already been some work
on scraping an archive of Delicious and that is going to pick up steam.

On the one hand, they seem to be doing things right with giving users control
over their data, and complying with their ToS. Pity this means the data that
got siloed away will be lost. Even when everyone does everything right, data
silos are not good in the long term.

------
maguay
I've switched to Pinboard.in, and couldn't be happier. Still, great news for
Delicious users!

~~~
ojilles
Same here. Even though I was satisfied with Delicious, I wanted my bookmarks
somewhere safe. Now the question arises: will Delicious write importers for
all these other services so that I can move back?

~~~
idlewords
Pinboard exports in delicious format, so you should be able to just re-import
and be good to go.

~~~
maguay
Thanks for your great service; I'm seriously enjoying Pinboard. Can't imagine
switching :)

------
citricsquid
cached version:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.avos.com%2Fdelicious-
press-release%2F) and in case that goes, image: <http://i.imgur.com/voNw9.png>

~~~
mdaniel
I believe Coral CDN (<http://coralcdn.org/>) is a superior way of surviving a
front-page placement on HN. AFAIK, all page assets are cached with Coral, not
just the page as GoogleBot sees it.

In this particular case it probably didn't matter as much, but for your
consideration, anyway.

~~~
apperoid
CoralCDN is far more superior. AKAIK, one its main main goals is to help
survive front-page placements on popular sites. Its also far more easier to
use. Since you mention it here is the CoralCDN for this article:
<http://www.avos.com.nyud.net/delicious-press-release/> . The only problem I
find with CoralCDN is that if you try accessing a URL that is already down
with CoralCDN and has not been cached by Coral it probably won't work. The
Google cache would be far more effective in such a case.

~~~
pyre
Well, people _have_ suggested an automatic CoralCDN feature to Hacker News.

~~~
apperoid
That would be good.

------
neilk
Does anybody know if any Yahoo employees are going to AVOS at the same time?
(Also, are there even any employees with full-time responsibilities on
Delicious?) Is AVOS going to try to re-hire some of the old Del.icio.us team?

This is good news but I am thinking that things at Delicious might be a bit
rocky as new admins adjust. If you're a happy Pinboard.IN user, or use some
other service, it's not necessarily a reason to switch today.

------
djjose
Just filled out the opt-in form
(<https://secure.delicious.com/settings/optin>). Can't wait to see what they
do with it. Note to the new owners: if you charge, I'll gladly pay.

------
greut
Is Delicious in good hands? There is no place like localhost:
<http://i.imgur.com/KGVzN.png> (funny)

~~~
vijaydev
Did you notice Delicous in the subject?

------
joshu
Congrats!

~~~
dtran
I'm really happy to see this. I think sort of joshu buying the company back,
this is one of the better possible outcomes for the future of the delicious
community.

------
necubi
The URL leads to a 404, but the press release is at just <http://avos.com>

------
bambax
When the info leaked that Yahoo was thinking about dumping Delicious, I wrote
a Chrome Webapp that lets one scrape bookmarks from Delicious, corresponding
to lists of tags (any bookmark, not just your own).

It's still out there (and still works):
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nbahmnpelbdcmkpllm...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nbahmnpelbdcmkpllmmadklmmienpggd)

~~~
atm153
Thanks for this! I use the built-in Chrome syncing now, but I never figured
out how to grab some of my tagged bookmarks.

------
jasonmcalacanis
Tbey are building a search engine. This is data source of human proportions.

~~~
ntoshev
I have this pet hypothesis that matching delicious tags with actual words
found on the web pages will make for a killer query expansion algorithm...

------
joel_liu
How much did they pay for delicious?

------
morganpyne
Has anybody reviewed the terms & conditions, privacy policies etc. Is there
anything in them to make me concerned that Avos will do anything with my data
that I won't like above and beyond what the existing Delicious T&C were?

I presume these guys have taken over Delicious because they see it as a good
business opportunity and I'd like to know that their opportunity isn't going
to be at my expense.

------
lizzard
I use it along with a team of people who tag stuff according to a particular
taxonomy. My scripts pull a bunch of those tags out through the api and cache
them on a local server where we can do whatever we like with them to show them
to readers. It's a really good way to do collaborative editing or curating of
new content. Anyway, I'm glad that it will be sticking around!

------
apas
I'm all in for Delicious. I love it and support and want to see it alive and
not rotting in Yahoo.

One thing I didn't understand though, is Joshua Schachter's reaction to the
news by tweeting: "inbox asplode!"
(<https://twitter.com/joshu/status/63294731077160960>)

Can someone explain?

~~~
tlrobinson
Maybe a bunch of people emailed him after hearing the news?

~~~
apas
hmm--it could be

------
teoruiz
Somebody installs wp-super-cache[0] in that poor dying Wordpress blog.

Glad to see delicious itself not dying.

[0] <http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/>

------
kjbekkelund
I went from being an avid Delicious user to using Pinboard instead. I'm really
looking forward to seeing what happens now, and hopefully there are so cool
stuff coming that I'll go back to being a fanboy again. This is (hopefully)
amazing news!

------
noahlt
Apparently nobody reads the TOS, because clicking the TOS link leads to the
press release.

------
joel_liu
Good for all delicious users.It's time to innovate the social bookmark again.

------
AwfulWaffle
I used delicious years ago, but only for the bookmark syncing. I switched to
foxmarks when it started, then eventually the built in sync of firefox and
chrome. Never cared about the social aspect of it all.

------
msort
Good example to show every area of Internet needs innovation.

Bookmarking is as old as the first web browser. It's great that a great team
is trying to save communities and innovate in this area.

------
neovive
Great News!!! As a long-time Delicious user, I'm glad to see that it will
continue on. I'm looking forward to any enhancements, but hoping the core of
the service does not change too much.

~~~
zupatol
There is a way to install the old plugin in firefox 4. Look at the post by
sergueybloom in this forum:
[http://support.delicious.com/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID...](http://support.delicious.com/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=5168)

------
theklub
I just used delicious last night for the first time in years and through weird
linkage discovered angry video game nerd which I find to be one of the best
web shows ever.

------
tuhin
In case you are still looking for the other setups, do give
<http://Pinboard.com> a spin. One time pay, but very nice.

------
cygwin98
That's GREAT news. Delicious is one of the web apps I can't live without. Hope
the new company can update the firefox plugin such that I can upgrade to
Firefox 4.

------
trustfundbaby
I wonder if they're hiring ... I would love to work on delicious, was about 6
months out from writing a bookmarking service for myself.

------
yr
Does anyone know what their motivation of buying it ? I'm pretty sure they
could write this in a weekend in python.

------
Marwy
For notes and bookmarks I'm using thinkery.me, is there any reason why I
should invest my time into Delicious?

------
ChrisArchitect
hmph, this one caught me by surprise..... more infos:
<http://www.delicious.com/help/transition>

------
jonthn
I can finally delete my yahoo account.

------
kaiwen1
How much did they pay?

------
nivertech
just transfered my delicious a/c to AVOS

------
wonjun
is Google buying Delicious next?

------
dangerdiabolick
Dead.

------
myearwood
The big question is ... How much did Yahoo get for the company ?

------
RShackleford
The following concerns me, from the privacy policy: "AVOS may sell, transfer
or otherwise share some or all of its assets, including your Personal
Information, in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganization or sale
of assets or in the event of bankruptcy."

------
BillSaysThis
Not sure that I'm as excited as I could be since they didn't set up their
webserver (avos.com) to handle the traffic this announcement was sure to
generate.

"Error establishing a database connection" is not your friend.

~~~
Macha
I wouldn't expect them to set up a web server ( or more likely servers)
completely capable of handling a significant chunk of the traffic to a major
website, just to serve the blog of their currently unnotable company.

They have until July, where they start to run Delicious themselves to set up
the infrastructure to handle that.

