On December 5th, I wrote What's wrong with delicious.com and somewhat predicted it's suicidal phase. And, then I have noted relatively high incoming hits on my article. On December 16th, TechCrunch wrote Is Yahoo Shutting Down Del.icio.us?. On December 17th, delicious/Yahoo! responded by clearing all blog posts and wrote What’s Next for Delicious? that confirmed suicidal in the form of sales.
What's wrong with Yahoo!
- Yahoo! is in the wrong hands (Think of Apple without Steve Jobs)
- Yahoo! is lacking vision. There are many ways to make profit and for the internet services like Yahoo!, the profit may be virtual things--instead of physical
- Yahoo! is chasing Google and rivals. When you're the pioneer, people may not leave easily. Many people still use Yahoo! mail. Yahoo! may even raise money through donations like Wikipedia; no one would be bother to donate, if they really like it.
- Yahoo! is hiring wrong people. I often used to tell "though skills are trainable, people are not replaceable". Yahoo!'s geocities closure without alleged backup is a stupid move.
- Yahoo! is too panic. Knowing own strength is an important perspective in life and may overcome weaknesses through strengths.
Why delicious is a good idea?
- It's a very good alternative for robotized search engines like Google (More SEO may spoil Google's power.)
- It can be evolved much more than digg and twitter, on it's own.
- It can also serve as a password manager and bugmenot killer. See, my post delicious.com as bugmenot.com killer?
What can we do? - Let's build better alternative
- Though there are lot of other alternatives, it's better to build a system out of delicious before it's getting suicided [sic].
- Raising money may not be an issue; may opt for VC or donations.
- Has huge profit potentials (data mining like Facebook can easily be employed and commercialized)
- Please make a noise here or there, if you believe it.
Comments
Personally I've grown levering the power of Yahoo tools and feeling heavy to see Yahoo!! sliding down...
You have done a nice analysis... Keep up the good work...