A few months ago, it looked like Yahoo were going to close Delicious down. Lots of people were happy when it got bought by AVOS rather than simply having the plug pulled on it. In the past week, they relaunched Delicious, but the relaunch seems to have lost a lot of functionality. People are not happy about it, particularly those in fandom (comparison of old and new Delicious; hacks using the API to see what you have; this amusing stack). Fandom promptly began searching for an alternative, and when asked by Maciej on twitter how Pinboard could be made more fandom-friendly, duly produced a 60 page collaborative spec and feature request (see also the Organization for Transformative Works, Archive Of Our Own and Dreamwidth for fan-led/friendly projects). As Maciej put it, “[b]y 2008 a whole suite of theoretical ideas about folksonomy, crowdsourcing, faceted infomation retrieval, collaborative editing and emergent ontology had been implemented by a bunch of friendly people so that they could read about Kirk drilling Spock”.
Anyway, I have a pinboard account now: mixosaurus. Not because I’m fannish, but because I believe in supporting collaboration, engagement, innovation, crowdsourcing, folksonomies and grassroots, user-driven sites. I don’t like being forced to manage my information in alien, awkward ways; if someone’s offering an alternative and is so clearly willing to listen, then I am willing to try it out and see if it serves me better.
So sorry Delicious, we’ve had some good times but for now it’s on hold. I hope you understand.