Delicious has just announced 4 new features to make its stacks, or collections of links, more social. Because the only thing better than a bundle of your favorite kitten websites is bundle co-created by you and your friends. You can now collaboratively build stacks, comment on whole stacks, respond to a stack with a stack similar to a YouTube response, and create private stacks. The features will permit new use cases like stealth cooperation and give Delicious an advantage over Pinterest which doesn’t offer private boards yet.

Private stacks make Delicious more than just a broadcast channel for your taste. You can stealthily hoard links and keep them to yourself forever, including sites you wouldn’t want your boss or mom to see.

In conjunction with the new collaboration feature, you can also silently assemble and discuss links with others, and later decide to present them to the world. Delicious offers a perfect example of how you could “share favorite engagement rings with your yet-to-be-announced fiancee.”

Pinterest doesn’t offer private boards yet. It told one Quora user that feature might one day be offered as a premium service, but that it wasn’t a priority because the site focuses on sharing. This gives Delicious an opening to exploit.

The collaboration feature lets you invite friends to edit your stacks. This could help teams cooperate on research, or let friends compile a set of favorite links around a topic.

Commenting on entire stacks lets you have conversations about the interconnections between links. You can also suggest links you think would enhance someone else’s stack.

Stack responses lets you battle over who can find the best content around a topic, or offer a contrasting collection. For example, if you’re worried your friends might actually buy something from their Atrocious Sweaters stack, persuade them not to ruin their image in the name of irony by responding with a stack of stylish sweaters.

Delicious is still less flexible than some group sharing platforms such as Facebook Groups, and doesn’t have the momentum of Pinterest. To stay relevant it needs to nail its core purpose — stable presentation of curated links, which isn’t as well supported by feed-based and photo-centric services.

AVOS, the startup behind the newly re-launched Delicious.com, has acquired the link-saving service Trunk.ly, the company announced in a blog post this afternoon. AVOS, which is led by YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, says that Trunk.ly’s “technology and insights will accelerate link-saving and searching capabilities in Delicious.”

Trunk.ly itself was founded in December 2010 by Tim Bull and Alex Dong, and offered its users the ability to save all the links they “liked” or favorited on social services such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, all organized into one place.

Funny, it seems like only yesterday that Trunk.ly co-founder Bull was commenting on TechCrunch, how the “new Delicious looks great, but we think automation (collecting links for you across your social graph) and search (forget tagging, just build a personal “google” of the sites you like) are where it’s at.”

Looks like AVOS must have agreed.

Trunk.ly says its service will now be discontinued and it will cease accepting sign-ups today. Full shut down is planned for two months out, so you can migrate your links elsewhere. (Cough, Delicious, cough?)

AVOS has been getting a whole lot of criticism by former Delicious users and fans – and even original founder Joshua Schachter – after the recent launch of the all-new Delicious. And granted, perhaps they would have been better off waiting a couple more months before launching.

But AVOS quickly moved to fix some issues, and announced that it was working on fixing others.

In a new post on the ‘Delicious beta status blog’, AVOS has just announced that is has now fixed a problem with Firefox extensions, and more importantly, started a ‘bookmark rescue operation’ to appease former users who’ve lost their old Delicious bookmarks:

For those of you missed the opt-in warnings that Yahoo! has been sending out over the past few months, we are working on a solution to rescue your bookmarks. We have designed a crafty solution and should have more news tomorrow. Stay tuned…

As I wrote when the new Delicious launched, it doesn’t really matter whether the tech crowd falls in love with the service (again), but rather whether it can appeal to a mass audience.

That said, I think it’s probably a good idea for AVOS to demonstrate that they care and that they are willing to address old users’ concerns all the same.

Delicious is back. Million dollar question is not: will you use the revamped social bookmarking service? But rather, will your mom, sister, and that dorky teenage kid from across the street use it?

As you may have heard, Delicious was saved from Yahoo’s incompetent hands by AVOS, the new startup created by YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, in April 2011.

Today, AVOS is relaunching Delicious, which they say was “rebuilt from the ground up”. In an interview with AllThingsD, Hurley says Delicious is a great brand that “belongs in Silicon Valley”.

Whatever that means, their mission will be to make Delicious popular among people that couldn’t care less about Silicon Valley but want to discover great content on the Web all the same.

(What if Twitter, Facebook and Google+ already solved that particular problem adequately?)

On the new Delicious website, you’ll find little references to ‘bookmarking’ as such. Rather, the revamped service aims to sway users into saving and sharing ‘stacks’ of online content with others. A stack is a collection of links built around a common theme or topic that can be shared in full with other users, enabling easy and swift discovery of online content by cutting through the noise.

AVOS calls said stacks ‘playlists for the Web’, which I think is an apt metaphor.

Also new: multi-word tags (e.g. “TechCrunch rocks”) and media previews. And wave goodbye to ‘network’, ‘fans’ and ‘subscriptions’, because the new Delicious is adopting the ‘Following’ concept we’ve learned to love thanks to Twitter, Facebook and other popular services.

If you used to be a Delicious user and would like to know what the transition means for you, go check out this support thread (particularly the last item).

Note that this is merely the first iteration; from the sound of it, AVOS has bigger plans for Delicious.

Anyhoo, screenshots (and demo video)!

Yahoo’s statement:

Today YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen announced they have acquired the Delicious technology from Yahoo!. They plan to continue the service that users have come to know and love and make the site even easier and more fun to save, share and discover the web’s “tastiest” content.

Providing a smooth transition for users is important to both companies. There will be a transition period where users can elect to sign up for a new account. Users’ public and private bookmarks will be maintained through the transition period and transferred as they are today when it is complete.

As we have said, part of our product strategy involves shifting our investment with off-strategy products to put better focus on our core strengths and fund new innovation. We believe this is the right move for the service, our users and our shareholders and look forward to watching the Delicious technology develop.

Delicious blog:

YouTube Founders Acquire Delicious

Today, we’re pleased to announce that Delicious has been acquired by the founders of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. As creators of the largest online video platform, they have firsthand experience enabling millions of users to share their experiences with the world. They are committed to running and improving Delicious going forward.

Providing a seamless transition for users is incredibly important for both companies. Yahoo! will continue to operate Delicious until approximately July 2011. When the transition period is complete, your information will be moved over to Delicious’ new owner.

Starting today, we will ask you to login to Delicious again and agree to let Yahoo! transfer your bookmarks to the new owner. That way, you’ll enjoy uninterrupted use of the service and will keep your account and all of your bookmarks when we make the transition. For more information on the Delicious transition, please refer to this FAQ.
Thank you for your patience in this time of transition and thank you for using Delicious!

FAQ:

Frequently Asked Questions
The answers to frequently asked questions about the AVOS transition
Whoa, what’s happening?
Sorry if we’ve caught you by surprise. Delicious has been acquired by the founders of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen and will become part of their new Internet company, AVOS. Here are a few links to catch you up to date on the latest news regarding Delicious (blog post, press release).

Why has Yahoo! chosen to transition Delicious to AVOS?
While we love Delicious (and our users love Delicious), we wanted to find a home for the product where it can receive more love and attention. We think AVOS is that place.

When will AVOS officially start running Delicious?
We anticipate Delicious in its current form will be available until approximately July 2011. By agreeing to AVOS’s terms of service upfront, you will allow us to move your data when the time comes to transfer control to AVOS.

What does AVOS plan to do with Delicious?
AVOS plans to continue the service that users have come to know and love and by working with the community, make the site even easier and more fun to save, share and discover the web’s “tastiest” content.

Will AVOS maintain the Delicious service with all of its functionality?
Yes, that’s the plan. There may be a time of adjustment as AVOS re-launches Delicious, but the company’s intention is to add new features and grow the service overall.

Where can I find the AVOS Terms of Service and Privacy Policy?
Right here. AVOS Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

How do I transfer my bookmarks?
To transfer your bookmarks, you need to “opt-in” to allow your account and all associated data to be moved. You can do this from the opt-in page.

What will happen to my public and private bookmarks?
By agreeing to the AVOS terms of service, you will allow us to send your account information, bookmarks, and all the data associated with your Delicious account to AVOS when they re-launch Delicious. Your public and private bookmarks will be maintained as they are today. The information transferred would include:

Delicious username
Delicious password
Email address
First Name
Last Name
Bookmarks, Tags and Notes
Inbox items
Tag Bundles
Tag Descriptions
Network Members
Subscriptions
Blogpost jobs
Twitter Auth credentials (if supplied)
What if I don’t opt-in to migrate my bookmarks to AVOS?
You will no longer be able to use Delicious or access your bookmarks after the transition is complete.

Is AVOS going to build a Delicious extension that is compatible with Firefox 4.0?
Yes. This is a top priority. AVOS plans to release a new extension as soon as possible. For information on workarounds, please see here. Please visit blog.delicious.com for the latest news on upcoming product releases.

Can I export my data from Delicious?
Yes. Please use our export tool.

Who can I contact for more information?
If you require assistance, our support team can help you.

Press Release:

YOUTUBE FOUNDERS ACQUIRE DELICIOUS FROM YAHOO!

Promise Users the Same Great Service And Even Easier & More Fun Ways To Save, Share, and Discover the Web’s “Tastiest” Content.

San Francisco, CA., – April 26, 2011 – Delicious.com, the leading social bookmarking service, has been acquired by the founders of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. As creators of the largest online video platform, they have firsthand experience enabling millions of users to share their experiences with the world. Their vision for Delicious is to continue to provide the same great service users love and to make the site even easier and more fun to save, share, and discover the web’s “tastiest” content. Delicious will become part of AVOS, a new Internet company.

“We’re excited to work with this fantastic community and take Delicious to the next level,” said Chad Hurley, CEO of AVOS. “We see a tremendous opportunity to simplify the way users save and share content they discover anywhere on the web.”

“We spoke with numerous parties interested in acquiring the site, and chose Chad and Steve based on their passion and unique vision for Delicious,” said John Matheny, SVP of Communications and Communities at Yahoo!.

The YouTube founders plan to work closely with the community over the next few months to develop innovative features to help solve the problem of information overload. “We see this problem not just in the world of video, but also cutting across every information-intensive media type,” said Chen.

Going back to their roots, Hurley and Chen located Delicious in downtown San Mateo, California, blocks away from where they started YouTube. They’re aggressively hiring to build a world-class team to take on the challenge of building the best information discovery service on the web.

About Delicious
Delicious is the leading social bookmarking service for saving, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. Started in 2003 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005, Delicious has built a passionate, worldwide community of millions of users. In 2011, Delicious was acquired by the founders of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. Previously, they co-founded YouTube, the world’s largest video site in 2005, which was acquired by Google 18 months later for $1.76B. Delicious is part of AVOS, a new Internet company based in San Mateo, California.

The Delicious saga continues … In reaction to what many have thought to be Yahoo’s mismanagement of the popular bookmarking service Delicious in the past couple of months, many people have tried to roll their own Delicious importers in hopes of taking advantage of the traffic exodus. Google too has today rolled out a Delicious migration tool for Google Bookmarks, to give people who were scared of the demise of Delicious a safe haven for their meticulously curated links.

On background: Yahoo gave many people a scare a couple of months ago when an internal Yahoo slide was leaked, revealing that Yahoo would be sunsetting Delicious, a social bookmarking site with a vehement cult following. It turns out that by “sunsetting” Yahoo actually meant selling (heh, that’s not actually what sunsetting means!). But while Yahoo has approached numerous people about unloading the property, it still has not found a buyer after three months.

Google would have been an excellent choice.

Just like the homegrown migrating services, you can login to the Bookmarks importer with either your Yahoo ID or your Delicious ID to import all your bookmarks and tags. And whatever you’ve bookmarked on Delicious integrates seamlessly with your already existing Google Bookmarks links.

Google launched Google Bookmarks in 2005 as a rival to Delicious and we pretty much forgot about it right until it launched a Lists feature in May. Lists let you copy your bookmarks into lists in order to share publicly and with friends and is completely under-utilized in my opinion. Under the right auspices, I could see Lists becoming a fulcrum for the social search element of Google News.

Right now to bookmark a site on Google Bookmarks you need to either click a star next to what you want bookmarked in your search results history, import your browser bookmarks or add favorite sites manually, which isn’t the most intuitive process. But Google Bookmarks is in the Google Toolbar and apparently sees a lot of use, so let’s hope this is the first in a series of forward-thinking revamps.

Interesting side note: Delicious founder Joshua Schachter used to work at Google before founding Tasty Labs.

Feed Google Bookmarks something "Delicious" – import your Delicious bookmarks now http://goo.gl/kJ7cN—
A Googler (@google) February 18, 2011

It looks like Yahoo has been looking for a home for Delicious for some time now. On his Diggnation web show this week, Digg founder Kevin Rose said that Yahoo contacted Digg to see if the company would be interested in taking over Delicious prior to when an internal slide leaked indicating Yahoo wanted to get rid if it and before the December layoffs (which would put the time period at early December/late November). In the video, Rose addresses this around the 36 minute mark.

Rose said that at first he thought that Yahoo was trying to sell Delicious off (which is what we assumed as well), but then realized that Yahoo was simply trying to find a home for the bookmarking service. Rose confirmed that Yahoo and Digg had preliminary talks simply about how much it would cost for the upkeep of Delicious.

Shortly after these early conversations, Rose said the news broke that Yahoo was planning to “sunset” Delicious and a number of other services in the Yahoo product family. Which is when he Tweeted that he would “really like to buy del.icio.us and make a seriously rad social bookmarking site, screenshot archives of bookmarks/audio annotations etc.”

Rose has a few compelling ideas to breathe new life into Delicious, including the ability to take static snapshots of a webpage at a given moment so users always have access to what a site looked like when they initially bookmarked it. Another possible feature, says Rose, could be an audio recording feature that would allow users to add audio annotations to bookmarks to add additional context to bookmark sharing. He’d also add pro accounts, and try to make a profit from the service.

Rose says he would definitely take over Delicious but didn’t offer any updates on whether this would actually happen. He added that he contacted Delicious’ original founder Joshua Schachter to see if he would want to back the project but as we know Schacter is pursuing other projects. Rose says that he’s hoping it finds a good home and he’d ‘love to do something cool with it’ but doesn’t know if Yahoo would give Delicious to him.

Thanks to @UniPaul for the tip.

When word got out two weeks ago that Yahoo is not 100% committed to Delicious, people who still use the bookmarking service started to panic and look for alternatives. One competing bookmarking site that some people turned to is Pinboard, a barebones bookmarking site which looks a lot like Delicious did in its early years: lean, no-frills, and very useful. The company saw an influx of traffic and activity. The chart above shows requests per minute to its servers in the three days following the Delicious news compared to the week before.

A couple hour ago, Pinboard Tweeted out a link to the chart:

This is what the Great Delicious Exodus looked like to our servers: http://bit.ly/frLwmA (contrasted with normal traffic a week earlier)—
Pinboard (@PinboardIN) December 30, 2010

The service wasn’t handling a huge number of requests to begin with—a few hundred per minute at peak—but that number increased about tenfold to over 2,500 requests per minute. Pinboard allows you to import your bookmarks out of Delicious. Mike suggested switching from Delicious more than a year ago. But from what I can tell it only has about 9,000 users. You are asked to pay a one-time fee to sign up, which helps to prevent spammers from joining. The current fee is $9.07 and it is based on the number of users. So not a whole lot of Delicious users switched to Pinboard, but it was enough to move the needle for the small bookmarking site. Update: Pinboard says it has closer to 16,000 users.

The longer Delicious remains in purgatory, the more users are going to look for alternatives like Pinboard. The site even provides an honest list of pros and cons for those considering the switch.

On December 16 Yahoo accidentally told the world they were shutting down popular bookmarking site Delicious. They fired most or all of the Delicious staff. Then they untold that story, saying they intended to sell it off and that the press got it all wrong.

Ok great. So how’s that sale process going?

Not so well, according to a handful of interested buyers I’ve spoken with. I know of five companies and venture firms that have reached out to Yahoo to talk about buying Delicious. Three of them have confirmed to me that Yahoo either hasn’t responded, or hasn’t responded with any serious level of engagement. According to one source, Yahoo has told people that they are planning on starting a sale process in mid-January.

One venture firm we’ve confirmed has expressed interest in Delicious is Spark Capital, although they haven’t responded to my request for comment.

Part of the problem may be price. Yahoo turned down a $15 million offer for Delicious in 2009, we’ve heard. And they may be looking for that much or more now. Most of the buyers I’ve spoken recently with say their interested in the sub-$5 million range.

That makes it a big who-cares for Yahoo. I imagine they are trying to focus on much bigger acquisitions, sales, strategies and cost cutting maneuvers that actually move the needle for them financially.

Another problem is how to pull Delicious out of the Yahoo infrastructure. Former Delicious product manager Stephen Hood wrote earlier this month:

Selling Delicious to a third-party

This certainly seems like the best option for Delicious and its users, and I hope that Yahoo is able to pull it off. But it’s not a straightforward proposition. As mentioned above, most of the team is now gone. Last week’s leak (and the subsequent fallout) also did unfortunate damage to the Delicious brand, sending panicked users to competing products.

But ultimately the real challenge here will be the technology. During my time at Delicious we rebuilt the entire infrastructure to deeply leverage a number of internal Yahoo technologies. It’s all great stuff but not exactly easy to remove or replace. Yahoo may have to license some of this technology to the buyer. I’m not sure they’ve done that before.

In the end it may be easier for a buyer to simply rebuild Delicious from the ground up, and then import all the data, say people with knowledge of the Delicious back end.

There’s one person out there who certainly wants to see Delicious live on – founder Joshua Schachter. I’ve asked him if he’s interested in taking Delicious private in a deal similar to how StumbleUpon was spun out of eBay and returned to it’s orignal founders.

Schachter says he’s busy working on his new startup and won’t be running Delicious again any time soon. But he does say he’s willing to help keep Delicious alive. He tells me “I’m watching this develop and am hoping Delicious ends up in a good place. I’m willing to spend time to help make that happen.”

Eventually Delicious will almost certainly be spun off from Yahoo. Not because Yahoo seems to particularly care what happens to the service, but because it’s just good PR for them to do this the right way. As a Delicious user, that’s good enough for me.

Yahoo bought Delicious in 2005. At the time, a post on the Delicious blog said:

We’re proud to announce that del.icio.us has joined the Yahoo! family. Together we’ll continue to improve how people discover, remember and share on the Internet, with a big emphasis on the power of community. We’re excited to be working with the Yahoo! Search team – they definitely get social systems and their potential to change the web. (We’re also excited to be joining our fraternal twin Flickr!)

I look forward to continuing my vision of social and community memory, and taking it to the next level with the del.icio.us community and Yahoo!

Note: The original blog post, cited when TechCrunch story broke the story, is of course dead. But thanks to web.archive.org, it’s still available.

Well, that part about taking it to the next level didn’t quite work out.

At the time of the acquisition, Delicious was one of the first exciting Web 2.0 companies. A product that could help the Web 1.0 portals, like Yahoo and AOL, evolve and take advantage of the soon-to-be tsunami of social. Techcrunch wrote “Yahoo, in addition to launching a flurry of new products in the last few months (and the pace seems to be accelerating), now owns the two most important tagging properties on the web – flickr and del.icio.us.”

When I first learned about Delicious, pre-Yahoo acquisition, I was very impressed. I thought it was great and even told friends about it. But, the service didn’t innovate much. Somehow, I learned about Diigo, which took social bookmarking to a new level, with many new and useful features. So, i exported my bookmarks to Diigo. Turns out, there are now many alternatives to Delicious.

It’s kind of shocking that a company with the resources of Yahoo couldn’t innovate and turn the site into a success. The founder of delicious, Joshua Schachter left Yahoo in 2008. He wrote a comment on the TechCrunch blog saying:

I was largely sidelined by the decisions of my management. So that was mostly the result rather than the cause, if that makes sense. It was an incredibly frustrating experience.

It’s not unusual for a founder to leave a few years after being acquired. And it’s pretty common to hear from current and former Yahoos that internal innovation efforts can be frustrating, despite some corporate initiatives to change that. To be fair, innovation can be frustrating experience at any company, big or small. When you own the company, of course, it’s much easier to get over the frustrations and focus on your vision and the reward.

But, here’s the problem.

In defending its decision to sunset Delicious, Yahoo wrote:

We believe there is a ideal home for Delicious outside of the company where it can be resourced to the level where it can be competitive… We believe there is a home outside the company that would make more sense for the service and our users.

Why can’t there be a home for Delicious (and potentially others like it) at Yahoo. There’s a whole slew of startups, without the power or baggage of Yahoo trying to compete in this space, or close to this space. Some of them, and their investors must think it can be profitable.

Why couldn’t Yahoo have a small team devoted to this and keep on innovating? Or at Yahoo, would there need to be tons of managers, VP’s, GM’s etc for such a project, with many levels of approval needed to get anything done. It can’t be as complex as search. (See Microsoft-Yahoo search deal, where Microsoft powers Yahoo search.)

A small team of developers should be able to run the system and make improvements. It could be done for a million or so a year in headcount. Then, probably a couple million more in infrastructure. To put that in perspective, in the last fiscal year, Yahoo spent $1.2 billion on product development.

After this week’s 4% staff layoffs, they still have around 13,540 worldwide employees. That presumably includes some staff at “Yahoo For Good,” whose mission is to empower people to make a positive impact.” Perhaps, it’s wildly profitable. I don’t really want to knock a site that encourages going green or spreading kindness. If you ran Yahoo!, which would be your priority, a social bookmarking site or spreading kindness?

Perhaps, one reason why Yahoo doesn’t innovate is the current culture. As former Yahoo-er Chad Dickerson wrote, “Yahoo! often got stuck doing PowerPoints about strategy instead of writing code and shipping products.” When Jerry and David started Yahoo, it was much more about writing code and innovation. When you have 600 million users, that gets harder.

There is still a lot of potential for a site like Delicious. Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, tweeted this week “I’d really like to buy del.icio.us and make a seriously rad social bookmarking site, screenshot archives of bookmarks/audio annotations etc.”

Some argue that sunsetting Delicious “makes eminent sense.” Of course, a company is wise to “stanch the bleeding” and shut down assets and re-focus on a new strategy (if it has a new strategy.) But, when you have ‘the biggest collection of bookmarks in the universe” in a potentially very social product and you can’t figure out how to run it in a lean, innovative and profitable way, it’s a real sign you are in trouble.

Disclosure: The author worked at Yahoo from 1999 to 2004, bled purple, and really wanted the company to succeed. But, he resigned Yahoo partly due to frustrations trying to launch new initiatives.

It has been fairly amazing to watch this Yahoo “sunsetting” news over the past 48 hours. It seemed to go from a bad leak, to huge backlash, to PR disaster, to confusion, to worse PR disaster. Now Yahoo, by way of Delicious (the most prominent service being “sunset”), has responded by lashing out at all the press for the coverage of the fiasco. Danny Sullivan just did a great job of ripping them a new one for this nonsense misdirection. But the issue actually goes much deeper.

Yahoo may not be killing Delicious, but they have killed something else: consumer confidence in them.

The entire time I was reading the back and forth of this fiasco, I had one thought on my mind: I need to get my pictures out of Flickr, pronto. No, Flickr wasn’t on the list of companies being “sunset”, but how do I know that in a year it won’t be? Hell, maybe even 6 months from now? I don’t. In fact, I’d say it’s 50/50 that something similar happens with that service.

Sure, Delicious has been largely stagnant over the past few years (which, of course, is Yahoo’s fault), but it has long been one of the mainstays of the so-called “Web 2.0″ movement. In fact, the sale of Delicious to Yahoo was one of the first stories that TechCrunch broke back in 2005. There are a ton of people that have a ton of data in it. It’s still a valuable tool to those people. It has millions of users. Yahoo just gave them all the middle finger.

Mathew Ingram argues that the moves makes sense from a business perspective. Maybe. But the key ingredient of Yahoo’s business is people using their services. If they’ve showing that they can just kill off such a big one on a whim, I’m just not sure how they can convince us that all of them aren’t at risk.

Yahoo says that Delicious isn’t “a strategic fit” for the company anymore. How is Flickr? I know the CEO Carol Bartz has a hard time explaining what Yahoo is, but of the dozen answers she has given, one hasn’t been “photo-sharing service”.

It’s true that plenty of other large companies kill off products all the time. Google, for example, “sunset” a number of services like Dodgeball and Jaiku in early 2009. But that was a different time. The entire U.S. economy was collapsing. Everyone was making cuts everywhere. And none of those services were the size of Delicious.

Yahoo’s plan now is to try to find a buyer for Delicious. That’s great, but it might not be so easy. Even though they just likely drove down the price with this fiasco, they’re still going to want a pretty penny for the company. It has been a part of Yahoo for so long that there’s likely a lot of proprietary code behind it, and they’re not going to part with that for nothing.

Even before all of this info got leaked, we had heard there was interest from other Bay Area companies taking Delicious off of Yahoo’s hands. The hold-up was and likely still will be the price. I’m sure they will be able to find a buyer, but it’s not going to be as easy as they’re making it seem.

And again, that’s very troubling. What if it’s a death-by-default situation?

And Flickr is a thousand times more troubling. That service is so large that the only ones who could likely buy them off of Yahoo are one of the big boys. That means Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, etc. And again, there’s likely a lot of code in there that Yahoo may not want companies that they still see as competitors in some ways buying.

The whole situation is just sad. Yahoo has become a shadow of what it once was. Even with massive layoff after massive layoff, they still have tons of talented people working there. But those people can’t do anything about big picture product direction decisions coming from the top as Yahoo tries to morph into some kind of something that will make shareholders happy.

And that’s the thing. Yahoo is all about the shareholders now. It’s all about the bottom-line. That’s all that matters. It’s not about the users. It’s not about building or maintaining great products. It’s about finding the ones that make the money and slicing the rest.

People often express their growing concerns about putting data into Google for privacy reasons. But I now have a problem putting data into Yahoo out of the concern that it could just disappear one day. That’s really terrifying.

[photo: flickr/dev null]

For a couple of days now, we’ve been hearing rumors that the Yahoo layoffs included the entire Delicious team.  Now Former Yahoo employee and Upcoming founder Andy Baio has tweeted out the above Yahoo! product team meeting slide that seems to show that Yahoo! is either closing or merging the social bookmarking service as well as Upcoming, Fire Eagle, MyBlogLog and others.

In some kind of weird founder solidarity, the slide was originally posted on Twitter by MyBlogLog founder Eric Marcoullier.

Listed under the ominous “Sunset” are: Delicious, Altavista, MyBlogLog, Yahoo! Bookmarks, Yahoo! Picks

Under “Merge” are: Upcoming, FoxyTunes, Sideline, FireEagle, Yahoo Events and Yahoo People Search.

It also looks like sundry Yahoo properties like Yahoo Deals and Yahoo Calendar will be made into features.

Delicious, MyBlogLog and Upcoming have been somewhat neglected since being acquired by Yahoo and founders Joshua Schachter, Marcoullier and Baio have all moved on to do other (more successful) things. Perhaps one tell tale sign of Delicious’ demise? The support forums are now riddled with spam and team sign-off missives like the one below.

I have emailed Yahoo for more information and verification and will update this post when I hear back.

Update: AllThingsD’s Liz Gannes is reporting that the Yahoo products will be in fact shut down and that the slide does in fact originate from an all hands meeting at Yahoo, following yesterday’s layoffs.Yahoo Product Manager Blake Irving has threatened to fire whomever leaked the slide.

The official response from Yahoo:

“Part of our organizational streamlining involves cutting our investment in underperforming or off-strategy products to put better focus on our core strengths and fund new innovation in the next year and beyond.

We continuously evaluate and prioritize our portfolio of products and services, and do plan to shut down some products in the coming months such as Yahoo! Buzz, our Traffic APIs, and others. We will communicate specific plans when appropriate.”

For the few of you unaware this is PR speak for, “We confirm.”

Update 2: Delicious just posted the following “What’s Next For Delicious” on its blog:

“No, we are not shutting down Delicious. While we have determined that there is not a strategic fit at Yahoo!, we believe there is a ideal home for Delicious outside of the company where it can be resourced to the level where it can be competitive.”

It seems as though Yahoo has made up its mind this morning that it will sell the property, not close it.

I’ve spoken to four different investors over the last two weeks trying to get at least a small piece of an angel financing round being quietly pitched by Delicous founder Joshua Schachter. He’s raising just $1 – $2 million, we’ve heard, at a valuation that may be as high as $15 million.

Schachter sold Delicious, one of the definitive startups that re-energized the consumer Internet sector in 2004-2005, to Yahoo in 2005. He left Yahoo in 2008, and joined Google in 2009. He left Google earlier this year.

Entrepreneurs like Schachter are highly valued by investors. The success rate of repeat entrepreneurs higher than first timers. And one potential investor put it succinctly – “Even if the company fails, someone will buy it just to get Schachter. There’s no way we lose our money.”

So what’s the name of the new startup? That seems to still be up in the air. I contacted Schachter to get confirmation of the funding raise and to ask what the new startup will do. He won’t comment on the funding. But he did say he was tossing around a few ideas for the startup. His response:

I’m either going to launch an open source operating system for unmanned aerial vehicles, or build a first person shooter to teach non-violent solutions based on buddhist principles. Or a pet food review site. Which one do you like best?

We’re going to take that as a “no comment,” too. Although I think the U.S. government would just love to use an open source OS for its UAVs. I’d go with that one, Joshua.

You can also bookmark URLs in @replies to you. In your Delicious account, the service will include any hashtags you include as tags for your bookmark and include the full text of the tweet in the bookmark comments. Here’s an example of the White House Twitter account’s tweeted URLs in Delicious, using Packrati’s tool.

Last summer, Delicious launched a deeper integration with Twitter, to allow you to also tweet your bookmarked links out. Packrati’s ability to add the URLs your Tweet out to your Delicious bookmarks is so simple, yet serves as an incredibly useful tool to store and organize the links you send out. Of course, you may not want to bookmark all of the URLs you Tweet out, so the site could make your Delicious account a bit noisy.

Problem was, the startup says, since users generally couldn’t play the music on their site and were constantly being directed to third-party websites and apps for streaming, people never really got that FriendFeed experience that would compel them to come back.

The Dutch company figured they needed to do something else, and the result of their overhauled strategy will be going live in alpha mode this morning. The short version: it’s Delicious-type bookmarking meets StumbleUpon-type discovery for online music.

Essentially, Twones will now focus on what it refers to as the “Music Bar”, a browser add-on / bookmarklet that lets users bookmark music that is being streamed on other websites or MP3 blogs and discover music others have bookmarked in a fun way. The Music Bar will debut as a Firefox extension, but Chrome and Internet Explorer versions are near completion, I’m told.

When installed, you can use Twones to bookmark music on thousands of supported websites, manage your virtual collection in a sidebar that looks a lot like Delicious, and share music with others in Twones or on services like Twitter and Facebook. In addition, any music you stream can be scrobbled to Last.fm so you can keep track of it there.

Finally, there’s an ‘Explore’ button that basically lets people jump to any random track that is in Twones’ database – no need to install the Music Bar even for that. This can be a great way to discover new music, but arguably there is a need for some kind of controller that lets you explore tracks within a certain genre, at least.

The problem with Twones is that, since it revolves almost entirely around music that’s being shared online elsewhere, you’re never quite sure if the songs you’re so carefully bookmarking are going to be there tomorrow, because the source could be gone for whatever reason. The startup says it’s working on ways to downsize that issue.

Twones aims to make money from advertising, affiliate revenues, maybe a premium version down the line, and/or as an analytics service for online music sharing (kind of what Bit.ly does for general links today). They haven’t really figured out which path to take right now, but the startup says the $500k seed funding it raised earlier is enough to buy them time to do so, as they are very ‘cost efficient’ in the sense that there’s no need to store a gigantic amount of music on their servers, seal license deals or run a complex content distribution network.

All in all, I could see myself using Twones for sure, but it feels more like a feature than a solid business to me. We’ll see if the next iterations of the service will make me change my mind.

Man-dinga would you look at all them hot dogs? The 4-in-1 Hotdog Maker leverages the wonderment of technology to not only cook what appears to be at least a few days’ worth of nutritious hot dogs, but also popcorn and hard-boiled eggs to boot.

It’s a hot dog maker, steamer, egg boiler and popcorn maker in one! No fat or oil is required, so it’s a healthier way to cook. Also includes warming spikes for hot dog buns. Plugs into standard outlet.

It’s a healthier way to cook! Did you read that part? Maybe I’ll go on an all hot dog, eggs, and popcorn diet and see how much weight I can drop by Memorial Day.

4 IN 1 HOTDOG MAKER [Spillsbury Specialty Toys] via Nerd Approved

This, my friends, is a poorly named product. But you know what they say; you can’t judge a donut making machine by its ridiculous hyphen-happy name.

Aside from the name, the Dough-Nu-Matic can have you shoving a delicious miniature donut into your mouth in less than 60 seconds. You’ll have a whole pile of them in under six minutes — a dozen, to be exact. “Just add dough and the Dough-Nu-Matic does the rest.”

I don’t know much about how donut dough is made or if you can just buy a big fat sack of donut dough at Sam’s Club, so any extra effort on that front might be a deterrent. Still, if you have $130 to spare and easy access to dough, this is the gift that keeps on giving. 

Dough-nu-matic [SkyMall] via Popgadget

About a month ago, I received an e-mail from a PR guy asking me if I’d like to try the Clear2O Water Pitcher, a Brita-style water filter for your fridge. Having just moved into a new apartment sans Brita, I jumped on the opportunity and requested a unit. Then on Monday of this week, a package came. I opened it up and lo and behold, it was the Clear2O.

This water pitcher works differently and even that is the understatement of the year. To use Clear2O, you have to replace a piece of your sink’s faucet so that you can snap on a hose that’s built directly into the pitcher’s filter. Although a pain in the ass, once setup, it’s really easy to refill. Just attach the hose and turn on the water.

Now after getting this all done, I thought to myself, “This better be the best goddamned water in the world.” My friend and I filled up a pitcher, chilled it for a bit and poured a refreshing, cool glass of water for ourselves.

Goddamn. Goddamn you Clear2O. Your water filter puts Brita to shame and then some. Despite the fact that it only costs $19.95, which is a decent enough incentive to buy it, the water is so clean, you can’t taste it. I shit you not. Come over my crib and I will let you drink from the Pitcher of the Gods. Now, thanks to Clear2O, I’ll never drink out of the toilet sink again. Someone give this company an award or something.

Is it better than a Brita? Definitely. Is it cheaper? Yup. Will you enjoy it? Sure will. That’s all you need to know.

Official Site (I think)