News regarding delicious.com

[wistfuljane]

There's some bad news for newsletters who used delicious.com automated script for generating newsletter issues [eta: or just used delicious.com for general organization/archiving purposes]:

I don't know how many of you still read this comm, but I'll post anyway! On Tuesday Yahoo laid off the entire Delicious team and today it announced at a company all-hands meeting that it will be "sunsetting" Delicious [eta: smaller version of the screencap], aka shutting it down, although there are no details yet on when or how, from any of my sources inside Yahoo. It could be months or years - although they'll almost certainly announce it ahead of time (at some point), like Geocities.

- Goddamnit, dreamyshade aka Britta from delicious.com

And from TechCrunch: Is Yahoo Shutting Down Del.icio.us? [Update: Yes].

Although the closing of delicious.com may be a long time off, I think there's currently limited alternatives to delicious.com in terms of being able to generate links into a customized format. I don't know, what are your thoughts on the feasibility of Diigo, AO3's bookmarks feature and other alternatives? bluemeridian has a related discussion on this here [eta: there's also a links roundup there].

Addendum: renay discussed here about the would-be impact of delicious.com closing on ff_press, the Final Fantasy newsletter, and possible alternatives to delicious.com.

Other links:

• AlternativesDelicious (big collaborative Google Docs, geared toward educators/education usages)
• merlinkinkmeme: Delicious discussion forum (discussion of delicious.com alternatives)
• hermitsoul: some whining and some contemplating (list of pros & cons for delicious.com alternatives)
• cupidsbow: diigo vs delicious, and how to set up diigo

Comments

[facetofcathy]

My first response is to say, nooooooooooooooooo. But after the most recent "improvement" to the save form, maybe I'm not so sorry that something else will inevitably rise up to replace it or else someone may buy it who wants it to improve for real.

We still use Diigo for the White Collar Newsletter to some extent. I don't mind it, but I don't know if murklins script that posts the newsletter (in, like, 2 minutes, it's awesome) could be made to function with Diigo.

I like the AO3 bookmarks for personal use, but they are not very easily browsable by others as lists or as likely to be stumbled upon as delicious.

ETA, I'd like to link this entry on the Fanlore comm if you don't mind.

[wistfuljane]

I'd like to link this entry on the Fanlore comm if you don't mind.

It's fine, I don't mind.

But after the most recent "improvement" to the save form, maybe I'm not so sorry that something else will inevitably rise up to replace it or else someone may buy it who wants it to improve for real.

*nods* I've been dissatisfied with delicious.com as a service for awhile now. It seems that they prefer aesthetic/design at the expense of usability and accessibility -- or like a lot of their attempts to streamline weren't very intuitive. I also don't like their stance on, hm, how to put this. It's like a lot of users use delicious.com in different ways. In most cases, different from how it's designed to work and so these users have different needs. delicious.com in general tends to treat those different ways & needs as singular cases -- like those cases are the exception and so they don't need to address or consider them.

murklins explained it better than I do and I think the change to the save form is just another instance of this dismissive attitude. So I echo your sentiment though I really will miss delicious.com because as semielliptical said, thousands and thousands of fannish bookmarks, years and years of collective work.

We still use Diigo for the White Collar Newsletter to some extent. I don't mind it, but I don't know if murklins script that posts the newsletter (in, like, 2 minutes, it's awesome) could be made to function with Diigo.

I've forgotten that the White Collar Newsletter used Diigo. That's a bit of reassuring reminder.

[caitie]

This is really bad news for the newsletter I work on (gossipgirlnews over on LJ). I'm pretty out of my depth with the scripts and coding discussion, so I suppose I'll just try to stay tuned and see if anyone comes up with a brilliant idea for bookmarking, tagging, and exporting links. If not, I think we'll be forced to go selective or close up shop.

[wistfuljane]

*nods* I feel you. There seems to be some earnest discussions though from Dreamwidth & AO3 about improving their memories & bookmarks feature, respectively, putting those developments at a higher priority, and dreamyshade's idea seems promising, especially if there'll be interoperating aspects with Dreamwidth & AO3. *hopes*

[hermitsoul]

I suppose burying my head in the sand is not the best plan? *sigh* For now I'm hoping it takes a few months at least, that should give us time to come up with something else. AO3 just bumped importing and improving bookmarks up the priority scale, and Britta sounds like she has some good ideas. Plus, I'm sure Dreamwidth coders are talking right now as well.

I do like Diigo for nonfannish bookmarks, will probably import my fannish ones to a new account and see how it goes. I also just signed up for a Pinboard account - so far it looks ok, though I'll definitely miss my bundles.

[wistfuljane]

AO3 just bumped importing and improving bookmarks up the priority scale, and Britta sounds like she has some good ideas. Plus, I'm sure Dreamwidth coders are talking right now as well.

*nods* From this thread, it seems like Dreamwidth coders are doing the same. Let's hope, hmm.

[msilverstar]

One idea is that we can keep some of the community nature by adding the tag FANDOM to all our bookmarks. So at least there's a way to connect on all the bookmarking sites as well.