Scrump.tuo.us

December 9, 2005 by Jeff Jarvis

Del.icio.us was just bought by Yahoo. Smart move by Yahoo, which was working on tagging but wasn’t as far along as Del.icio.us. Hope it turns out to be a good move for the very smart Del.icio.us crew and that they have wonderful Vulcan mindmelds with Flickr.

Delicious blog post here. Here’s the take from investors at Union Square.

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  • Louis

    Yahoo has a long road ahead of it. Their attempts to allow Flickr users to push the boundaries of the eula ever so slightly have met with a bit of resistance. http://www.flickr.com/forums/help/14692
    But they are learning. This could be huge.

  • http://unbeknownst.net KirkH

    Tagging is interesting but it’ll always be a niche thing if they use the del.icio.us interface. If you’re banking on profiting from the wisdom of the crowds but the crowds don’t understand the tool it’s not going to work.

    Case in point: http://del.icio.us/popular/ ranks what the typically techno-centric users are tagging. The top five items are about:
    Javascript
    CSS
    HTML
    Windows Internals
    CSS

    The first thing they’ll probably try to do is overhaul the User Interface to get more mainstream content included. I’m still a sceptic, most people can’t be bothered to bookmark a page let alone tag it.

    If small really is the new big then Google, Yahoo, etc. are like fat monkeys clutching shiny metal objects they never be able to pull through small holes. Stupid analogy but it sorta works.

    Del.icio.us is very cool but doesn’t pass the “can you explain it to a six year old” test. Flock is a confusing beast to the uninitiated.

  • http://unbeknownst.net KirkH

    ….Tagging works with photos because they’re worth 1000 words. If you first have to read the thousand words before you can tag it won’t be nearly as popular.

  • http://www.technologyevangelist.com Ed Kohler

    A very wise move by Yahoo. I imagine there is a nice overlap between the Flickr and del.icio.us crowds. Yahoo may be able to play matchmaker for those unaquainted with the other service and ramp things up by integrating (then actually publicizing) the services on their web site.

  • http://cyberciety.blogspot.com Carl

    Perhaps the ultimate beauty of tagging is how it helps guide readers to content. I think that following tags will be bigger than being a tagger. Yahoo brings with it the knowledge of the more mainstream user, which should help the whole tagging thing grow.

    Tagging, for Flickr, is critical when trying to search for image content. How else would you be able to find a picture of a gardenia, for instance?

    ‘Tis still rather new. It’s exciting to consider where this might lead.

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