AVOS’ Delicious Disaster: Lessons from a Complete Failure • Hacker News Board

Re: AVOS’ Delicious Disaster: Lessons from a Complete Failure

#31

Post by Rotor » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 6:13 PM UTC

handelaar wrote: post #9

Rotor wrote: post #4

I'm not referring to the new Delicious changes but the actual release itself, users still cannot login or retrieve passwords (including myself). I've been over at the beta blog trying to get answers and judging by the amount of major issues, this does not look like a well planned release: http://deliciousengineering.blogspot.com/

And they're still blaming losing god-only-knows how many accounts entirely on the users. "Missed the opt-in emails" my arse.

Argh, very frustrating indeed. Yet another good reason to backup your online account data. Just because it's hosted externally by a "trustworthy" company doesn't mean your data will always be there.

Re: AVOS’ Delicious Disaster: Lessons from a Complete Failure

#32

Post by naner » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 6:20 PM UTC

I am (was) a very heavy delicious user. Luckily, I backed up my delicious bookmarks a few weeks ago. The export function on the new site doesn't seem to work and if it does, I doubt all my bookmarks will be there.

I started typing out a long laundry list of issues, but it doesn't matter. Suffice it to say the new site is nearly unusable. There is nothing new that is useful for users or that would attract new users, nor is there any revenue model in sight.

I would be surprised if more than 10% of past delicious users stay with the site.

Re: AVOS’ Delicious Disaster: Lessons from a Complete Failure

#33

Post by mun2mun » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 6:56 PM UTC

sciurus wrote: post #20

That article needs to come with a huge "YMMV" disclaimer. I can still save my bookmarks via the bookmarklet. I can still view my bookmarks at http://delicious.com/sciurus . The transition hasn't impacted me at all.

Do you see all tags you saved there? Did you browsed by tag after the transition? For example your programming tag collection have small set of links. I am sure there was hundreds of them before the transition. I haven't faced password reset problem though. I exported my bookmarks after hearing about transition. Lucky me :).

Re: AVOS’ Delicious Disaster: Lessons from a Complete Failure

#34

Post by adulau » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 7:03 PM UTC

They just killed the network feature of del.icio.us. I was using it regularly and that was my incentive to put regularly my bookmarks with meaningful tags or/and description.

So I decided to moved to https://pinboard.in/u:adulau

Re: AVOS’ Delicious Disaster: Lessons from a Complete Failure

#35

Post by LiveTheDream » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 7:07 PM UTC

teej wrote: post #3

I can understand why hardcore lovers of the old Delicious are upset at the "changes". Change can be really tough if you've stuck with a site through that many years. But in the end, the old Delicious isn't changing - it's dead. What now exists is an entirely new site under the delicious coat of arms. What users dont understand is that there is no "going back". It's upsetting that your beloved site is dead, but mourn…

> the delicious of 2004 cant survive in today's web

The old delicious had all the features I ever wanted it for. When the "sunset" leak happened, I immediately set up accounts at pinboard and trunkly but continued to bookmark on delicious and let the others pull in from my delicious RSS feed.

Now that the RSS feed is gone, I will start bookmarking on pinboard directly. Pinboard was built to emulate the classic Delicious anyway, and has tag suggestions.

The missing feature is the equivalent of delicious.com/tag/whatever, where you would see a ranked-by-popularity list of URLs that were tagged "whatever". That was always an excellent fallback/discovery tool when I didn't get good search results on Google or a vertical search engine.

EDIT: delicious RSS is back, actually. I guess enough people emailed about it.

Re: AVOS’ Delicious Disaster: Lessons from a Complete Failure

#36

Post by DanBC » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 7:08 PM UTC

I don't want to be the "Let's make an open source version; it'd only take a weekend" guy, but why doesn't someone else do a good social bookmark site? What's stopping someone from providing the features that are missing in new delicious?

Also, "stem to stem" should be "stem to stern" - I don't know why stuff like that bothers me so much, but it does.

Re: AVOS’ Delicious Disaster: Lessons from a Complete Failure

#37

Post by kristallizer » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 7:23 PM UTC

john2x wrote: post #27

I could have lived with the changes (by ignoring them), but now tags are basically useless. All my tags since the change have been a mess between tutorial/tutorials, book/books, etc. Any recommendations for alternatives? (I've already checked Pinboard but it has a sign-up fee)

Diigo is a great alternative, and it has a free plan too. The feature set they offer is so impressive that I moved on to the 'Premium' plan the same day I signed up.

Re: AVOS’ Delicious Disaster: Lessons from a Complete Failure

#38

Post by joshu » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 7:29 PM UTC

teej wrote: post #3

I can understand why hardcore lovers of the old Delicious are upset at the "changes". Change can be really tough if you've stuck with a site through that many years. But in the end, the old Delicious isn't changing - it's dead. What now exists is an entirely new site under the delicious coat of arms. What users dont understand is that there is no "going back". It's upsetting that your beloved site is dead, but mourn…

changes are one thing. arbitrarily changing the tag separator from spaces to commas is entirely another.

Re: AVOS’ Delicious Disaster: Lessons from a Complete Failure

#39

Post by rryyan » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 7:32 PM UTC

naner wrote: post #32

I am (was) a very heavy delicious user. Luckily, I backed up my delicious bookmarks a few weeks ago. The export function on the new site doesn't seem to work and if it does, I doubt all my bookmarks will be there. I started typing out a long laundry list of issues, but it doesn't matter. Suffice it to say the new site is nearly unusable. There is nothing new that is useful for users or that would attract new users, n…

I can offer a data point: I was able to export my data from the new delicious on tuesday (after noticing the changes) and then import it into a new pinboard account with no issues or anything missing (998 bookmarks and 2748 tags). maybe I was lucky!

Re: AVOS’ Delicious Disaster: Lessons from a Complete Failure

#40

Post by adambyrtek » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 7:47 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #36

I don't want to be the "Let's make an open source version; it'd only take a weekend" guy, but why doesn't someone else do a good social bookmark site? What's stopping someone from providing the features that are missing in new delicious? Also, "stem to stem" should be "stem to stern" - I don't know why stuff like that bothers me so much, but it does.

There are several alternatives, with Pinboard being the front-runner (and my personal favorite). However, none of them had an established brand, and Delicious users didn't have a compelling reason to move. Looks like this has just changed.