Delicious is Saved

When a leaked Yahoo document suggested the company was planning to shutter Delicious, the social bookmarking service, this Sundogger was devastated.

Maybe “devastated” is too strong. More like “seriously bummed.”

I backed up my bookmarks, just in case Yahoo shut it down without warning. Other bookmarking tools were appealing, but I delayed a move until the fate of Delicious was revealed.

Finally, some encouraging news emerged this week: Yahoo has sold Delicious to YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen.

Many of you have long forgotten about Delicious. It had become a mostly-neglected piece of the Yahoo empire. Its features have been surpassed by newer, shinier tools. And let’s face it: it wasn’t boosting Yahoo’s bottom line.

Despite those shortcomings, I still rely on Delicious and my hundreds of bookmarks stored there. Besides my sharable tags, I have private tags organized in an only-makes-sense-to-me manner. Using browser extensions, it’s easy to add, edit and manage my bookmarks. And searching other bookmarks often delivers better (and faster) results than the search engines.

In short, Delicious still has utility for me – even if its features and appeal are stuck in 2007.

Hurley and Chen promise to invest in Delicious. At minimum, it’ll be intriguing to see what they have planned – and until then, I’ll remain a user. Even if it makes me a bit (more) unhip.