A Delicious Bitter Pill

Yesterday Yahoo announced that it would soon be shutting down the Delicious bookmarking site (you can read the full story here).  When I first discovered this on Twitter last night, I was struck with two distinct waves of anger and I’m still splashing angrily this morning.

For anyone who doesn’t know (or hasn’t talked to me), Delicious.com is (and soon to be was) a social bookmarking site.  Users were able to bookmark, tag, and share web pages, and it provided a wealth of “pre-research” on virtually any topic.  When I wanted to learn about something, rather than go to Google, I often started on Delicious.  The service also provided an easy way to share a group of bookmarks on a particular topic at the end of a lesson or presentation. Tracing roots back to 2003, Delicious was one of the original social tools that provided value to the individual and to the participating community.

In the past year there has been a noticeable drop in talk about the site.  I hadn’t heard it mentioned at conferences or within my PLN.  However, I assumed this was a mark of the tool’s maturity.  It was so ubiquitous and readily used that people didn’t notice it anymore.  In the fall I tweeted the question, “Has everyone left Delicious?” and I received many replies that the service was still vital in the research and education communities.  I let go of my (foolish) apprehension…until yesterday.

Looking back, of course, one should have seen this coming.  Yahoo is leaking dollars and employees like a sieve (my concern about the loss of a website is nothing compared to concern for the many who lost their jobs this week).  Delicious didn’t make significant money (a bit of ad revenue) and I don’t see any way that this could be changed; I think that a pay wall would have chased away the masses .  The service was only one of several “dead wood” sites that Yahoo is closing (I can’t help but also note that Flickr is also a Yahoo-owned site and though there is no indication that they intend to take similar action, one cannot help but be a little gun shy).

I mentioned in the beginning of this that I felt two distinct waves of anger.  The first was over the loss of a site I used regularly and enjoyed.  As I moved through the stages of grief, I reconciled myself to moving my stuff to the Diigo site (there is information on moving your bookmarks here).  Diigo offers all of the Delicious features and more, and the transition is easy.  I have had friends encouraging me to go to this for a while.  So I’ll try Diigo, though I noted on Twitter this morning, that I will significant “trust issues” for a while.

As I regained my footing from this first wave, a second hit me twice as hard.  What about all the people whom I have steered toward Delicious, or toward my bookmarks there?  Only a month ago I gave a presentation encouraging teachers to use social bookmarking as a tool for student learning, and I was pleased to hear that some were using and enjoying the service.  What do they feel today?

I feel like writing a note of apology to anyone who has attended on of my workshops, but what would I tell them?  And more importantly, how can I encourage them to use and trust the tools of social media that exist by such slender threads?

Even now I can see that down the road I will use this as a lesson, and maybe this will help some people understand the importance of closely monitoring their online data (to quote one of the educators I follow on twitter, “think global, backup LOCAL”).  But today, I just feel burned and bruised, and I just want to take my bookmarks and go home.

As always, I invite your comments.

For those who want, there is a good list of other Delicious alternatives here