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Yahoo! and delicious.com - What's wrong?

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.

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Comments

Anand Nataraj said…
You got the point Rajesh that Yahoo!! is missing Vision ... There has been huge cries agains the way Carol Bartz is handling things... She is ceasing everything to improve the profits... Not sure if she forgot the support she must have got from Geocities or Del.icio.us...

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...
Dec 23, 2010, 12:09:00 AM
R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah said…
Thanks Mr.Anand for your kind words and sharing our opinions.
Dec 23, 2010, 11:59:00 PM
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