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by maxim khesin.
Original Post: ya.hool.icio.us! (and me)
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Here is some impersonal impressions followed by a personal comment.
First, this is great news for the many reasons:
For me, del.icio.us has been the single most useful web app. Why? According to John Batelle's Search, 37% of web site visits are returning to old sites. That's because the accessing information that's already in your brain is very valuable. But what if a *part* of the information is in your brain? You remember that there is a recipe to do this or that, but not exactly the recipe is? That happens a lot on the web, which is why being able to return to a web page is so valuable. Basically, for me, del.icio.us has become a significant memory extension.
So now that del.icio.us is with Yahoo, there are a few very positive developments that I expect. First, this great service now has a sugardaddy, and we can expect it to continue flourishing. But here are some other benefits I expect in the future: - Scale. I am not talking about scaling for regular usage - while del.icio.us has never had great scale problems, (Kudos to Joshua for that) the official API has, IMO been slimmer than could be, and bandwidth concerns have always been there. E.g. Del.icio.us Python API always had an "Unofficial" component. I expect this problem to go away. (Joshua?) - Saving linked pages. One of the persistent problems with the web in general is that it moves around. After I started using del.icio.us, and my clickstream pattern shifted towards more previous pages, I found a lot of them dead. (I actually discussed the problem with Joshua - see below). When Yahoo attempted to clone del.icio.us with MyWeb, the one feature I really liked is the ability to save the entire web pages that you bookmark. This feature will enhance the value of del.icio.us tremendously, I hope to see it integrated in short order. - Incorporating del.icio.us into MyWeb will obviously enhance the social component of del.icio.us.
What's in it for Yahoo? A few nice things.
It's true that del.icio.us (just like Bloglines, and unlike Flickr) suffered from not having a business model. But as PG observed, there is nothing wrong with building a company to be bought. This statement has many nuances, dealing with scale, current IPO climate and such. In case of del.icio.us it (also) means that it has a lot of monetizable value when combined with other services. Here are some things that come to mind. - First and most obvious it's going to enhance Yahoo's MyWeb, ultimately drawing in eyeballs that Yahoo is already getting paid for. - Another, more hidden benefit is enhancing their search results. As the web has gotten more interactive and dynamic (emergence of the blogosphere being the biggest reason/manifestation) there is increased interest in knowing new and hot information. And while the link-based popularity ranking (pagerank) is stagnated by the need to crawl a lota web, and hope that the good pages already have many links to them, del.icio.us provides this informaiton very fast - just go to their popular categories. Even for people who have web pages or blogs, there are still many more bookmarks than web pages - it's just easier. (BTW, this is one speculative reason why Google bought Blogger - knowing immediately what is in a million blogs has value. At least John Batelle thinks so). - Also, no web crawl is complete (in time), as the web changes. Crawling is a recursive algorithm that starts from some 'seed' pages and proceeds outward. There is value in starting from pages that are 'interesting', and del.icio.us definitely delivers that. It's rumored (?) that Google used dmoz.org directory as a seed, and del.icio.us, IMO is (much) better. - Another subtlity is that search engines have no access to all sites, due to the robots.txt protection. Now quite a few of these 'inaccessible' pages will be stored in Yahoo, by 'user request'. I don't know if Yahoo will go as far as incorporating them in the search results, interpreting the robots.txt restriction as 'do not crawl, but teleporting is OK', but who knows what kind of processing they can do.
Del.icio.us itself always had a robo-booter. I do not know if it was just a bandwidth issue, but it made me think about who would want this information for free and the owner would not want to give it away to. Search engines.
Funny, this is in a sense a full circle for Yahoo (which is perhaps why the aquisition happened) - Yahoo started its life as a human-edited directory.
Now, onto the personal part. By the time del.icio.us announced their seed funding, I was already an addicted user. It happened to be that Joshua opened his office (if you can call it that) a train and a hop from where I work. I had a few ideas for him, notably partnering with Archive.org for permanent web page caching. The idea is not a bad one - the Archive is attempting to save the valuable info on the web (via Alexa search engine) and del.icio.us is a good indicator of value. Joshua liked that idea at the time, but perhaps this announcement explains why it never materialized.
Here is the other interesting part. While we were at it, Joshua offered me a job. At that point it was just him a Peter, so I guess that would make me #3. I did not take it for a bunch of reasons, which at this point I am reflecting on. - del.icio.us was a Perl shop at the time, I was more of a Python person and didn't feel qualified to jump in. This is NOT a good reason - a decent hacker can and should learn other languages, and if you are offered work at an interesting startup, just get over it. - I just switched jobs, going from a 5-person startup to a 100-person one. This is actually a bunch of bullets. - The previous startup experience was not positive. I cannot say that the company is a failure - they survived some very lean times, became profitable and, after 8 years in business (last week) moved into a real office. Still my exit strategy has remained tenuous - I was given a 'stock option grant' which was basically written as an IOU, insisted for years on better papers and still never got them. I am very far from giving up on it, but this should be a lesson to all ye kids. Another, and the biggest problem with the company was the DNA. It was started by a very smart professor in image recognition field. The problem with professors is that they often a) lack real-world software experience b) used to exploiting willing students for their experiments. I, who had NO previous professional software experience bought a copy of Source Safe(yes, it was a windoze shop) with my own cash when I saw how well the present 'folder-based source control system' was doing. We had a branch of the project for every combination of two guys in the company. But the guy was, and I believe remains convinced that he knows how to run every part of a software business. Top that with screaming matches about how to code, sales calls in the development 'room', days on end consumed by tech support (an outcome of the previous 2), this was not a pleasant experience. This was still NOT a good reason not to work with Joshua. He was very smart, but obviously a hacker with respect for others. - I just started a new job at a much bigger and already successful startup. This is also a bunch of points. - There is a lot of job-hopping on Wall Street, but I have this crazy theory about allowing your new employer, who pays a significant initial hit while you are getting up to speed to get some good work out of you. If you are a career programmer, here is a hint: potential employers look for this pattern on your resume. How valid this point is to you is, I guess question of individual moral sensitivity, when it comes to switching apples for oranges with a bigger salary. When it comes to a rare chance to work on a great idea, this NOT a good point, even from a moral perspective. Working on a great idea is creating value for many people, and IMO the benefit of the many should be the greater factor. - Ultimately, here is the primary reason for not taking the job, and this is the reason that I fortunately remain happy with. I was already working for the much bigger startup, and although I could not contribute as much to the company as I might have to del.icio.us, I felt valued, the work environment is very good despite some of the bigger-company nonsense, the company is doing a good thing (fixing some of the problems with the stock market that hurt millions regular investors) and there is good payoff(yes, there are nice stock options here) ahead. Combining this with the fact that I am married with two kids (+1 soon), and the payoff/risk ratio is much much higher where I am this was definitely the right choice.
Of course there is some regret in missing the exitement of new ideas and making a much bigger difference in the company.
Fortunately, ideas is not something I have trouble with (other than having too many), so one day I look forward to putting the pedal to the metal.
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