Logo blatently and unapologetically stolen from Niall Kennedy’s Blog.Today, del.icio.us has joined the Yahoo! family, and I for one am really excited. I’ve always found myself tetering between del.icio.us and My Web. While del.icio.us has always had elegance and simplity, it lacked the social networking aspects of tie-ins with 360 and the ability to be searched by some ubiquitous search box (e.g. Yahoo!).
Over the long term, I found myself gravitating more toward My Web. Before you ask, let me just say that it wasn’t just for company-line-yes-man-eat-your-own-dogfood reasons. After committing myself to My Web, I often found myself really tempted to cheat after seeing little mashup apps that did this or that with del.icio.us. “Damn nerds,” I thought myself, “why don’t they build that on My Web too?”
It will be interesting how these products converge, diverge or remain on parallel tracts. After the Flickr acquisition, both Flickr and Yahoo! Photos remain as separate products. That, however, was a tale of two very well-established products with very established and passionate user bases and communities. The whole del.icio.us/My Web alignment might be a little different. I’m not sure how entrenched either of the two audiences are or how big their numbers are.
Regardless of what happens, all social bookmarking applications have a common obstacle. Users don’t get why they should participate, and there’s really no good elevator pitch for it. People will just have to start using it to get it. There’s the rub.
When I got all excited this morning, Tina asked me what the big deal was. After I told her, she asked what del.icio.us was. I could have told her that it was a social bookmarking service, but that would probably have had about the same informational impact as if I told her that they make turd sandwiches.
Anyhoo, welcome to the Yahoo! family!
