

AVOS’ Delicious Disaster: Lessons from a Complete Failure - snappergrass
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/avos-delicious-disaster-lessons-from-a-complete-failure/705?tag=nl.e539

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tptacek
Good time to be Pinboard!

I'm sympathetic to the "real names only" terms that some services run under,
but for a bookmark sharing service that policy provides no end-user value.
This is a service I think you should pay money for, instead of allowing
yourself to be the product the company is selling to others.

~~~
wyclif
Does anyone really doubt that Pinboard is the true heir of del.icio.us? I
think payment is really a core part of the DNA of their service, because it
allows Maciej to make it reliable-- exactly what is needed in a
bookmarking/tagging utility on the web.

~~~
unicornporn
Seems like a good alternative. Only thing that keeps me away is that the
design is so darn painful. I have nothing minimalist design, as long as it is
not a excuse to get away with bad design. White space is so messed up, menus
collide with each other, tag clouds float out into the margins. To me the site
is an UX catastrophe. But as with most things, I guess I can get used to it.

It's not like the new Delicious feels more tempting. I will also give Diigo a
try this weekend.

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naner
I am (was) a very heavy delicious user. Luckily, I backed up my delicious
bookmarks a few weeks ago. The export function on the new site doesn't seem to
work and if it does, I doubt all my bookmarks will be there.

I started typing out a long laundry list of issues, but it doesn't matter.
Suffice it to say the new site is nearly unusable. There is nothing new that
is useful for users or that would attract new users, nor is there any revenue
model in sight.

I would be surprised if more than 10% of past delicious users stay with the
site.

~~~
rryyan
I can offer a data point: I was able to export my data from the new delicious
on tuesday (after noticing the changes) and then import it into a new pinboard
account with no issues or anything missing (998 bookmarks and 2748 tags).
maybe I was lucky!

~~~
unicornporn
I guess you were lucky, or I might be very unlucky. I think the problem might
be I have close to 20.000 bookmarks, most of them neatly organized and tagged.
The export chokes after a minute or so and just shows a blank page. Grabbing
via the API (using curl or WGET) gives me a very incomplete dump.

Last export I did was earlier this summer. I never imagined they'd screw up so
bad. Now they don't even reply to my e-mails.

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aespinoza
I think this needs a little more thought. Think about this: Delicious doesn't
really have a successful business model (if any). Yahoo! was about to kill it.

Now AVOS picks it up. Why would a startup pick it up? There is no way they can
make a successful business out of the current state of the site.

But Delicious does have one thing: a big set of users and their bookmarks.
Information.

It is obvious that AVOS was going to have to change the system enough to build
a business model to experiment with. These changes are doing exactly that.
They very well could be experimenting with the features, to see if their
business model (hopefully there is one) works.

Now I agree with experimenting, I am EXTREMELY disappointed with the execution
of it.

There are things that you just have to do right. Experimenting with features
is fine, and since I get Delicious from free, I am willing to experiment. But
if the site FAILS most of the time. That is unacceptable. I don't care if Eric
Ries says "EXPERIMENT", use the "SCIENTIFIC METHOD". This is no excuse for
doing a poor job with your tools and your subject of experimentation.

Unfortunately for them, and I do feel for them, I don't think the site will
recover from this. The trust is gone. At least with me.

~~~
cpeterso
Why did Yahoo! buy Delicious in the first place? I assumed Yahoo! would use
Delicious' links and tags to cleverly augment their search engine ranking. I
realize now that I was giving Yahoo! too much credit.

~~~
aespinoza
The original idea was just that. But Yahoo! doesn't have direction. Even if
they had a CEO, the company was just not focused enough on anything. First
they said they wanted to be a search engine, then they moved to content and
search...

Now they don't even have a search engine now, they use bing. They say they are
a content and media company, but I don't really use any of their services
other than delicious and sometimes the email, and I don't know anybody who
does.

I think when they bought Delicious, it was a great idea because the company
had direction and Delicious made sense. Over the years they lost focus, and
have been just wandering around. They don't make sense.

------
shashashasha
_"Among the required changes is disallowing users to use the service with
their previous handles, and making everyone use a “real name” policy."_

Where in the new Delicious does it actually ask for this? I moved my account
over and haven't seen anywhere in the settings to even enter anything other
than a username. Just curious, because I agree Delicious has changed for the
worse, but don't like the vitriol and froth in this post, especially if it's
wrong.

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AbyCodes
_"We know - we know - they are not going to take the time to find the bits
that made it sing and hum and make those parts better. We know that on a basic
animal level that they don’t get it."

"Delicious is a bitter lesson for everyone. It’s the difference between how
people actually use a product versus how rich, out-of-touch knuckleheads think
people should be using that product, all to further their own self-
interests."_

Well said.

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sciurus
That article needs to come with a huge "YMMV" disclaimer.

I can still save my bookmarks via the bookmarklet. I can still view my
bookmarks at <http://delicious.com/sciurus>. The transition hasn't impacted me
at all.

~~~
mun2mun
Do you see all tags you saved there? Did you browsed by tag after the
transition? For example your programming tag collection have small set of
links. I am sure there was hundreds of them before the transition. I haven't
faced password reset problem though. I exported my bookmarks after hearing
about transition. Lucky me :).

~~~
sciurus
Nothing has jumped out as missing. I may just be lucky in this regard. Being
of the sysadmin persuasion, I have many more bookmarks tagged "software" than
I do "programming".

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Rotor
I'm not referring to the new Delicious changes but the actual release itself,
users still cannot login or retrieve passwords (including myself).

I've been over at the beta blog trying to get answers and judging by the
amount of major issues, this does not look like a well planned release:
<http://deliciousengineering.blogspot.com/>

~~~
handelaar
And they're still blaming losing god-only-knows how many accounts entirely on
the users. "Missed the opt-in emails" my arse.

~~~
Rotor
Argh, very frustrating indeed. Yet another good reason to backup your online
account data. Just because it's hosted externally by a "trustworthy" company
doesn't mean your data will always be there.

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vutekst
This debacle is what made me finally switch to Pinboard. Well, that and I like
the Pinboard guy's developer blog. <http://blog.pinboard.in/>

~~~
cooperadymas
There are only a couple of services/products I would used based on the people
running them. Pinboard falls into this category. The developer is active with
the service, very open and honest, and gives great customer service.

If another similar service offered significantly more features or an otherwise
better product I might be convinced to switch, but it would take a lot of
convincing.

The other two products that come to mind as fitting in this category are
Sublime Text and Balsamiq mockups. Both are great products, but are backed by
even better companies / people.

In the offline world, I feel the same way about my (State Farm) insurance
agent. His office has bent over backward when necessary to ensure things are
taken care of.

Great customer service, honesty, and listening to the customer goes a long
ways toward building a successful business. This is why Pinboard will thrive
and profit while Delicious continues to sputter.

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adulau
They just killed the network feature of del.icio.us. I was using it regularly
and that was my incentive to put regularly my bookmarks with meaningful tags
or/and description.

So I decided to moved to <https://pinboard.in/u:adulau>

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jonmc12
Writing has been on the wall for some time. Surprised anyone that uses
Delicious seriously did not switch to Pinboard or equivalent. No sure Avos is
to blame so much as delicious users not being proactive about the inevitable.

~~~
teej
The reaction of Delicious users is a product of poor communication on behalf
of AVOS. They wanted it to sound like they were simply taking the reigns when,
in fact, they were building a new product. Nothing from this email indicates
that the old delicious is going away:

"Dear Delicious User, This is our final notice to let you know that Delicious
is transitioning to a new owner, AVOS. To continue using Delicious, you must
agree to let Yahoo! transfer your bookmarks and Delicious account information
to AVOS by September 23, 2011. After your bookmarks and account information
have been transferred, you will be subject to the AVOS terms of service and
privacy policy."

~~~
firebones
That read so much like an ultimatum (and was honestly the first email from
them that I actually saw about the transition) that I had little desire to
migrate since I had already moved to Pinboard. Kind of like if Facebook sent
something similar...meh, just dump me already, my life exists outside your
free service.

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DanBC
I don't want to be the "Let's make an open source version; it'd only take a
weekend" guy, but why doesn't someone else do a good social bookmark site?
What's stopping someone from providing the features that are missing in new
delicious?

Also, "stem to stem" should be "stem to stern" - I don't know why stuff like
that bothers me so much, but it does.

~~~
adambyrtek
There are several alternatives, with Pinboard being the front-runner (and my
personal favorite). However, none of them had an established brand, and
Delicious users didn't have a compelling reason to move. Looks like this has
just changed.

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ChrisArchitect
a rocky week for sure, but I don't see major grounds for hate. Heavy
user/dependent on Delicious for my bookmarks etc. By day 2 I was relatively
running smoothly again. It was all expected and they listed the features that
are still in progress and I've already seen some of the things (like FF
plugin) start to work again. So..... I don't see where the ZDnet hate and user
account stuff is coming from. What, all the users that didn't really use the
service and then saw tech news about the relaunch and decided to visit the
site again only to find their accounts gone/not migrated? The warnings for
migration were borderline intense/annoying the past month or so....and that
was months after the emails and notifications when AVOS jumped in.

------
Toddward
I haven't been following this as closely as others (primarily because I was
never a heavy delicious user), but was there a lot of pressure on AVOS to push
out the new version as quickly as possible? I find it hard to believe that a
company would try to relaunch a product _without_ transferring a good amount
of the historical data that makes it so useful.

They should have taken their time and gotten it right. You only get one chance
to make a first impression.

~~~
adambyrtek
<speculation>Maybe the contract they signed with Yahoo had a clause that bound
them to transfer all data from Yahoo datacenters by a given date? Maybe the
code became so coupled with the Yahoo infrastructure that it would have been
extremely difficult to deploy it somewhere else? Maybe – like most programmers
– they underestimated the time needed to do the rewrite?</speculation>

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dajobe
What a pathetic rant. I was totally not surprised that day #1 of a total
codebase rewrite would not have all the features of the old version. AVOS
hinted enough at this too. At least they are innovating and responding to
users. Having said that, I do hope 'networks' returns since that's the feature
I miss, so far.

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john2x
I could have lived with the changes (by ignoring them), but now tags are
basically useless. All my tags since the change have been a mess between
tutorial/tutorials, book/books, etc.

Any recommendations for alternatives? (I've already checked Pinboard but it
has a sign-up fee)

~~~
kristallizer
Diigo is a great alternative, and it has a free plan too. The feature set they
offer is so impressive that I moved on to the 'Premium' plan the same day I
signed up.

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danmaz74
I'm glad I moved all my bookmarks to diigo months ago. But it's still sad to
see a great service killed like this.

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bgraves
I would love to hear Maciej's take on all of this (not to mention his server
stats for the past few days!)

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watmough
Here's how to export all your links to an xml file:

<https://user:pass@api.del.icio.us/v1/posts/all>

This worked just fine, as of Friday 02:43 CDT. Just substitute in your own
username and password.

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aristidb
Relevant? <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html> ("Never
rewrite.")

~~~
pbreit
Sort of. Except I think if you salvage a property out of demise you've got
some lee-way.

------
teej
I can understand why hardcore lovers of the old Delicious are upset at the
"changes". Change can be really tough if you've stuck with a site through that
many years. But in the end, the old Delicious isn't changing - it's dead. What
now exists is an entirely new site under the delicious coat of arms. What
users dont understand is that there is no "going back". It's upsetting that
your beloved site is dead, but mourn and move along - any attempt to revive it
is folly.

AVOS is ultimately at fault here. They didn't want to hurt the feelings of the
Delicious old guard, so they made it sound like everything was ok. But
everything -wasn't- ok with the product those users fell in love with, it was
being obliterated. The best thing AVOS can do now is help users come to terms
with the present reality.

Ultimately, the re-launch was the right move - the delicious of 2004 cant
survive in today's web. But AVOS's communication around the transition just
wasnt frank enough. They should have just held a funeral.

~~~
DanielRibeiro
I use delicious on a daily basis, and I feel that the problem it solves is
very much alive. Maybe I am a bit of a power user, as I search and tag (and
love the automatic tag suggestions) all my delicious links from a FF plugin.

But I believe it is still a solution for a very persistent problem, and as
long as it solves it, it will be able to survive very well in today's web.

~~~
aespinoza
I agree. I use delicious on a daily basis. The problem it solves is there.

The main problem is the fact that they are doing a crappy job at releasing. I
don't think they planned this very well.

~~~
DanielRibeiro
Agreed. I had my fair share of problems with Delicious these days. The linked
article is very relevant. But I wish it was better, not gone.

