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What Happened to Delicious.com?

[ Delicious? ] What happened to Delicious.com? I logged in today after a week or so and everything is gone. Well okay, not everything, but somehow many features have completely disappeared. After scouring as many options and settings as I could find, there seems to be some serious problems at the new Delicious.com.

Here are a few examples of what you can no longer do at Delicious:

  • View all of your tags – only a small subset of your tags is available.
  • View all links for each tag – only 10 links are available for each tag.
  • Use your tag bundles – remember all those awesome tag bundles? Gone.
  • Customize bookmark settings – no longer possible to show list of views.
  • Organize anything – no longer possible to organize tags or anything else.

Just some random thoughts about all of this nonsense. First of all, it’s nonsense. This is a perfect example of why I refrain from using as many 3rd-party services as possible. It’s not the website’s fault for removing major functionality. Somehow, somewhere, someone thinks it’s a good idea to remove bundles, delete tags and disable navigation. I started using Delicious back when it was spelled “del.icio.us” and before Yahoo swallowed it up into the abyss. Things weren’t great with Yahoo, but at least they kept things usable.

So now that Yahoo is finished doing nothing with Delicious, they’ve sold it to the founders of YouTube, who now seem determined to make the site less usable and more like every other overly simplified social-media site. I sincerely hope that the current Delicious interface/design is an alpha or beta version or something, because it’s really bad to straight-up dump all of the functionality that made the site usable and halfway enjoyable in the first place.

Don’t get me wrong – I ruv Delicious and have been using the service for years now. I think I have like 2824 links bookmarked already, and would love to add a bunch more in the years to come. But I absolutely will drop Delicious like a bad habit if at least basic-level functionality is not restored.

If you know anything about the new changes such as how to view all bookmarks for a given tag, please leave a comment!

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Jeff Starr = Fullstack Developer. Book Author. Teacher. Human Being.
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43 responses to “What Happened to Delicious.com?”

  1. Well, the current version is beta.
    it’s true, I miss some of the functionality, but I also have to say that lots of the functions that where there before where not that straightforward to use.

    On the other hand I love the bookmark stacks that are easy and simple to use, and that already helped me organised all the bookmarks I hadn’t organised well before.

    So don’t get all “they’re destroying it”, wait till beta is over, I think it’s going in a good direction, even though some convenience is missing

    • Jeff Starr 2011/09/29 8:12 am Reply

      If it were just me redesigning the delicious.com site, with millions of users and millions of bookmarks – even I would have enough sense to NOT remove or limit users’ ability to access and organize all of their tags. But that’s just me. You would think that the new delicious.com design team would have even more insight and do even better – not just leaving, say, tag bundles intact, but make them even better.

      But nope. Despite the fact that millions and millions of bookmarks were organized with tag bundles, the delicious folk simply deleted them, utterly destroying the organizational structure and dare I say usability and practicality of the site.

      As far as using stacks goes: that’s the whole point – I’ve already spent hours of my time organizing my 3,000+ bookmarks using tags and bundles, so a big giant NO THANKS to doing it all over again using “stacks”. And even if I wanted to waste my time, I can’t access all of my bookmarks to even begin. It’s just a bad joke.

      I could go on, but I’m confident the article sums up the other major reasons why I think “they’re destroying it”.

  2. Just another post of frustration. I keep sending them feedback on the little things that come up for. Hopefully they are paying attention to all of us.

    The Chrome is extension is semi-broke but does work if you press ctrl-d.

    Biggest annoyances:
    – no autocomplete of tag
    – tag suggestion is not user relevant
    – comma separation. “We separate with commas now.” Thanks. You spent years getting me to not type a comma and now you want me to…
    – my own bookmarks seem buried if you go to the main page.
    – stacks are ok but seem like a rip on pinboard
    – stacks are difficult to create on the fly since they force you to start a stack with 3 bookmarks. very unintuitive

  3. I dont use delicious but I am tired of major players swallowing everything up, ruining or closing them.

  4. Robert Spencer 2011/09/30 1:44 amReply

    I’m also deeply unhappy with some of the changes they’ve made. Will have to see if things improve over the coming months.

    @Rob M.

    The page at the link you provide appears bust, but there is a working chrome extension available:

    https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mnaelnkmidnndgikjbiifihgklnocljd

  5. I dumped delicious (also had been on it since old spelling) as soon as I heard that the company was sold. And since then I just keep my bookmarks myself in Chrome and a few in Firefox. Who needs online bookmarking anyway with a desktop computer, one could ask him/herself…

  6. Justin | Mazzastick 2011/09/30 6:26 pmReply

    I went there today and noticed the changes and I was wondering what the heck is going on.

    I used to be able to log in usiing my yahoo account but now I can’t.

    I guess I will have to re register.

  7. Kim Tyrone Agapito 2011/10/03 12:49 amReply

    This is another boo for Yahoo.

  8. Get your own delicious – use Scuttle!

    I’ve been using it for quite a while now (approx. 2 years) as a bookmark server / “share bookmarks on all systems and all browsers from everywhere”-solution ;)

    Aside of that, it’s supposed to be a delicious clone and is also supporting their API (and thus any “3rd party application” that supports that), althou I’m mainly using a Firefox extension for this, not really caring about the “share together” features.

    cu, w0lf.

    • Hello,
      You say you are using scuttle, Do they have the tag bundle feature? because I can’t find that information.

      Thanks
      Sam

  9. Tag Bundles gone forever? I don’t need ‘public-social’ stacks, then bye bye Delicious
    Andrea

  10. I went to pinboard.in right after Yahoo got delicious. Never looked back, it’s great.

  11. Canceled my Delicious account, now I manage my 350 bookmarks in Firefox by synch (3 PCs and 2 Laptop). Not as comfortable as tag Bundles, I agree, but USABLE.
    Andrea

  12. Hi,
    I found this post about delicious because, as all of you, I really like using online bookmarks. I have more than 1000, tagged, which are gathered under bundles. So far, the Firefox extension displays all the links as I saved them. I am pretty pissed off that the tags can’t be managed in bundles today, as every one of you. But have you checked on delicious blogs and other help article that they may enable bundle next. Do you belive this? I wish it will be done in the following months. Otherwise, I’ll switch to diigo, which has the same functionality as delicious with their lists…
    So, do you think delicious will reactivate bundles, and do you think diigo is releveant?
    Thanks, cheers
    Henri

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