All software will break your heart.I've used the public bookmarking service delicious (formerly known as del.icio.us) more than six years, nearly a lifetime for a web service. I've relied on it to park items of interest, share topics with friends and strangers, and build blog posts from the accumulated links. I currently have more than 9500 bookmarks stored there. You can see them on my links page.
Yahoo bought delicious from its founder in late 2005 and did very little to help or hurt it. Late last year, Yahoo signaled that it was going to shut down delicious, prompting a bit of panic. Along with many thousands of other bookmarkers, I opened an account with pinboard.in. They had some fun dealing with the sudden influx of interest, but they survived: Anatomy of a Crushing (Pinboard Blog). Pinboard later got through an unfriendly visit from the FBI: FAQ about the recent FBI raid (Pinboard Blog).
Pinboard costs a few buck; delicious is free.
I was in the habit, though, of using delicious. I had browser extensions, scripts that put selected links into selected blog posts, and a bunch of other stuff that I didn't feel like replacing. I was lulled into this inertia by delicious's continued and unchanged presence.
In the spring, a couple of guys who'd been at YouTube formed a company called AVOS and bought delicious for pretty much couch changed. They worked behind the scenes through the summer and launched the new site in late September: A New Flavor…Still Delicious | AVOS.
The reaction to the new web service was consistent: AVOS’ Delicious Disaster: Lessons from a Complete Failure | ZDNet.
The new service has broken too many things that used to work on their way to adding eye candy that almost no one wants or needs.
I've been patient, giving them time to listen to their customers and respond. They've tried, but I fear that they've gone too far down the wrong path to come back and fix what they left behind, the stuff that made delicious really useful.
Today, though, I tried to do some real work with my bookmarks and couldn't.
delicious was a pickup truck that was good for real work. Now, it isn't. I don't know what it is, but it isn't what I need.
I'll be re-migrating my stuff to Pinboard over the next few weeks. Most of you won't notice or care, but a few might see a few changes. I'll keep my delicious account, but won't be adding to it.
In the 90s, there was a nifty product called Calendar Creator. It helped you build family calendars with birthdays and other recurring events of note. I don't remember if it was version 2 or 3, but one release broke everything. They tried to make it do more and wound up doing less. I bought the new version, tried it once, and never used it again.
Since then, I've seen countless products bloat themselves out of existence. Ubuntu, a popular Linux distribution, has added a bunch of eye candy that prevents it from running on older, slower, less powerful systems. Facebook may be on that track as it keeps adding features that make it more difficult to use.
I like new stuff, particularly in technology. I'll try lots of products in their earliest stages and stick with them if they show promise.
When I find utilitarian products, however, I don't need improvement. I go to the store, point to my shoes and say, "I want these shoes, but new." I've worn button-down shirts for close to 50 years. (No, not the same ones, although not for a lack of trying.) My pillows are older than I am.
Google has it right. The basic design of their home page has changed very little over the years. They've added powerful features, but mostly hidden from view. When they've tried fancy stuff (Wave, Buzz), they failed and quickly dropped the products. They know how to add changes without breaking their core product.
delicious didn't do that. It broke what they did well and gave us new stuff that we neither wanted nor needed.
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