New Delicious Is Not That Tasty

I returning to using Delicious a few weeks ago, after a long hiatus, mostly because I had read that it was going to be relaunched with updated sensibilities. This morning I discovered a new Delicious when I created a link, and I have to say, I agree with Marshall Kirkpatrick: it’s not that tasty.

Marshall Kirkpatrick, New Delicious is a Bitter Disappointment

A tool that lets everyday people organize links of interest to them and as a result create user-generated metadata, discovery pipelines, resource search powered by passive popularity - the power and potential of the network effects in the old Delicious were amazing.

Unfortunately, it does not appear that those qualities were appreciated in the relaunch. Quite the opposite. (No RSS feeds?!) The concept of collections of websites (“stacks”) doesn’t feel new or fresh anymore. Big pictures are nice but they’re hardly new or fresh either.

It feels to me like in its effort to go mainstream, the new Delicious has lost or underplayed its strengths and not yet shown us anything new that has world-changing potential. Maybe it will come back as a result of the tagging that happens as stacks are created. I don’t know.

I am not interested in creating stacks of links. I was hoping that the new delicious would reposition the tool in my workflow, with better integration with Tumblr and other tools.

Instead, the new Delicious is an attempt to become a destination site, attracting people to moderated lists or ‘stacks’. Yawn.

So, I am officially back to looking for the missing pieces in my world: a place to note things I have read and what I want to read. I think I will simply try to figure out a way to do that on Tumblr, directly.