'Delicious' leaves a bad taste
Jinfo Blog

20th December 2010

By Joanna Ptolomey

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It seems that the rumours are true and that the social bookmarking site Delicious is to close, or perhaps just change. Whilst generally being regarded as a good product (by users) Yahoo! do not find it a ‘strategic fit’ for them and are seeking a life outside the organisation – i.e. they are looking to sell it (http://blog.delicious.com/index.htm). Last week on many social media platforms the conversations followed with outrage and ‘what now’? Social bookmarking has become popular for storing, tagging, sharing and mashing community collaborations. Many users commented that Delicious was one of their favourite tools – including me. So what now? Where to go from here? Well Yahoo! have announced that they are maintaining Delicious for the time being so bookmarks will not disappear overnight. But what are the alternatives? My fellow contributing editor at FUMSI, Marcy Phelps, is already on the ball and in her recent tipple points towards Diigo that has an FAQ on transferring over from Delicious (http://www.fumsi.com/go/f14301). Pinboard is another alternative (http://pinboard.in/) and again they give some useful pointers about moving from Delicious – and interestingly arguments for and against. There is a tour of the site also. Stumbleupon has been around for a while too and has supporters (http://www.stumbleupon.com/). I have heard from fellow professionals that Delicious users would find this site more ‘at home here’. This site ‘learns what you like’ – this could either work for you or not. It depends on what you use bookmarking for. Xmarks has also been recommended to me (http://www.xmarks.com/), but I have never heard of it until very recently. It works across browsers – FireFox, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari. So with Delicious possibly on its way out, if Yahoo! do not find a buyer, then we should plan for moving on. With change being the only constant, feedback would be great on this post. What are you using and what have you tried? Perhaps we should be thinking about a mini review on the LiveWire of bookmarking tools. I am interested to know what you folks would like or need.

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