Thanks to a leak inside of Yahoo, news spread quickly yesterday that the struggling technology firm might be shutting down various elements of its services as a way to stay afloat. Someone inside the company apparently leaked a slide from an upcoming presentation that showed some of the Yahoo services in “sunset” mode. I don’t think Yahoo has made it public or outright confirmed the plan, so who knows what it means.
The one service that might be shuttered that caught my eye was Delicious, which is the bookmarking platform that I use almost daily, and I have been using it for years now with great success. I have a nice little Delicious tool bar in my browser and when I see something of interest or something to save for later, click a button and it is saved. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I even used the bookmarking function within the browser itself. That doesn’t make sense for me, working as I do on at least three computers each day (home, school).
I have more than 4,400 bookmarks on Delicious, I just realized. And, I have my delicious network set up for an RSS feed, so that when my friends add resources to their Delicious account, I get to see that in my RSS reader. I’ve stumbled across many cool tools, and had a strange inside glimpse into the thinking and planning of my online friends that way (which is sort of strange, too.)
So, if Delicious is going to be gone (and that is still up in the air, but there seems to be a gust in the wind), then what do I do?
Well, I have used Diigo before and I think that will be my first step forward. Last night, I exported my delicious bookmarks and then imported them into Diigo. (see this website about how and where to import bookmarks) I know there are a lot of them, but they still hadn’t shown up this morning, so I am trying again.
Diigo does a lot — almost too much for me. I liked the simplicity of Delicious. But I know I can use Diigo in simple terms, particularly now that I found its diigolet button, which you can drag into your browser for saving bookmarks. (One thing I did not like about Diigo in the past is that I installed its add-on for Firefox and it was just too much — too many choices, too much room in my browser — the diigolet is small and useful).
And this reminds me, once again, that we need to be ready for change and be ready to adapt (remember the end of free Ning?) and not get stuck to doing things one way. I may eventually realize the true power of Diigo and never wonder about Delicious.
I wondered about other alternatives to Delicious and Diigo, and came across this lengthy list. Go explore!
Peace (in the bookmarks),
Kevin
Update is that Yahoo now says it wants to sell Delicious off.
Oh no! I, too, have been using Delicious for about three years. Based on the update you left (above comment), do you think it’s time for me to start moving everything over to Diigo?
I think you have time, so no need to panic. But you might want to start looking around for an alternative, such as Diigo. There are others, too.