Our post yesterday on a leaked Yahoo presentation slide about services being shut down or merged generated a lot of concern among Delicious users, who saw their beloved social bookmarking site in the dreaded “Sunset” category. A lot of other sites went ahead and declared (on insufficient evidence) that this meant that Yahoo was for sure going to kill Delicious, and even went so far as to provide lists of similar services for users who wanted to jump ship.
Not so fast, says Delicious in a blog post: While they acknowledge that “there is not a strategic fit at Yahoo!,” they write that “there’s no reason to panic. We are maintaining Delicious and encourage you to keep using it.”
Is Delicious being shut down? And should I be worried about my data?
– No, we are not shutting down Delicious. While we have determined that there is not a strategic fit at Yahoo!, we believe there is a ideal home for Delicious outside of the company where it can be resourced to the level where it can be competitive.
What is Yahoo! going to do with Delicious?
– We’re actively thinking about the future of Delicious and we believe there is a home outside the company that would make more sense for the service and our users. We’re in the process of exploring a variety of options and talking to companies right now. And we’ll share our plans with you as soon as we can.
What if I want to get my bookmarks out of Delicious right away?
– As noted above, there’s no reason to panic. We are maintaining Delicious and encourage you to keep using it. That said, we have export options if you so choose. Additionally, many services provide the ability to import Delicious links and tags.
We can only imagine how upsetting the news coverage over the past 24 hours has been to many of you. Speaking for our team, we were very disappointed by the way that this appeared in the press. We’ll let you know more as things develop.
Earlier today, Jason Calacanis said that he was reaching out to Yahoo to ask if Delicious — and its original team — could find a home with Mahalo. Given the popular outcry yesterday among Delicious users after the slide leaked (Marshall Kirkpatrick‘s eulogy for Delicious was especially moving and interesting as a study of what social bookmarking could do even better than RSS or social voting sites), expect more private-sector interest in keeping the site alive, although an open-source effort maintained by its fans and power users could be even better.
(via Delicious Blog)
