Delicious has been bought

[murklins]

Yahoo! has sold Delicious to AVOS, a new company started by the founders of YouTube. You can read about it on the Delicious blog and in the AVOS press release. You might also want to hit up the Transition FAQ for more details.

Looks like they want people to opt-in to an agreement that lets them transfer your bookmarks, etc. to AVOS when the time

Comments

[oxoniensis]

Thanks for the info! This sounds good.

[murklins]

I'm glad to finally get some news, and sold is better than shut down!

[jusmine984]

I'm glad that they're not just shutting it down! I do hope, however, that there will be a decent add-on for firefox for the new thing. I'm quite fond of my bookmarking procedure! lol.

[murklins]

I'm glad it will live on, too! From the FAQ, it sounds like getting out a new FF add-on will be a priority for AVOS, so fingers crossed that it will be good.

[jusmine984]

Yay! I really love the delicious add-on, so fingers crossed! :)

[chaneen]

FYI, if you're using Firefox 4 (or any FF that the delicious addon won't work with) you can install the Nightly Tester Tools addon and select "Force Addon Compatibility" to get it to work. I've been using FF4 on my laptop and have been able to tag things to delicious with the addon with no problem.

[mandy_croyance]

This is an interesting development. I'm really glad that Yahoo has successfully sold the company and that it won't be shutting down in the near future. I'm not thrilled with the opt-in agreement because it means that a lot of valuable content from inactive users won't be transfered over, but it's better than nothing certainly

[prettykitty_aya]

Ditto on this concern as it's pretty much all I use my del account for :(

[mandy_croyance]

Haha. By "primarily", I maybe kind of meant "exclusively"? lol

I tried early on to use it as a general catch-all for sharing awesomeness, but it just kind of transformed itself into a fannish thing and so I found other ways of saving/sharing the other stuff :P

[murklins]

Ugh, I have no idea how they will end up treating fandom links if their TOS prohibits pornographic material. Bad enough if explicit/adult content in the notes/tags/etc fields violates the TOS, much much worse if they count links to such content a violation as well.

I don't think the current Delicious TOS under Yahoo has anything to say about pornographic content. It seems more focused on refusing any responsibility for what people post. ("In accessing Delicious or following links to third-party websites you may be exposed to content that you consider offensive or inappropriate. You agree that your only recourse is to stop using Delicious. ")

[kaizoku]

Has anyone opted in and did it change anything? I'm assuming/hoping we can keep bookmarking (with or without opting in) until the July transition.

[murklins]

I started opting in with one of my test accounts, which happens to be a Yahoo ID account, not an old skool Del account. I was not able to complete the opt-in though because Step 2 of the process was to convert my account from a Yahoo ID to an old skool account. Obviously, this should not come as a surprise, that we need to separate our Yahoo accounts from our Delicious accounts now that Yahoo has sold it to AVOS. But the thing is that I use the Yahoo ID account to test scripts that I write for other people who also have Yahoo ID accounts, and Yahoo ID accounts talk to the Delicious API in a totally different way than old skool accounts do

[kaizoku]

Ah, that is good to know, thank you! I thought we should check with you first before converting, since it would be really sad to have the script break when we've just started using it. I'm pretty sure the gleenewsletter account is an old skool one; we've been able to use this tag editor which apparently only accepts "old logins."

For now, it looks like we can keep using delicious without opting in, which was my immediate concern.

However, for people who have always wanted an old skool Del account but signed up too late and got stuck with a Yahoo ID account, you are suddenly in luck!

Oh, the irony!

[murklins]

Yes, gleenewsletter is old skool, so you'll definitely be fine if you opt-in. And I just heard from someone with a Yahoo ID account who converted to old skool and their script is still magically working somehow, so maybe there's nothing to worry about on that front after all.

But yeah, there seems to be no immediate need to opt-in, everything still works as expected.

[csad21]

Yes, but AVOS bought, but I'm really worried. I mean, we all know about Youtube and the many, many censorings it does, so the question is, will that carry over to delicious?

I accepted the opt-in--as if we have any real choice--but the TOS guarantees that, if they enforce it--which, if they run delicious the same way as Youtube they certainly will--that fandom will be booted out of delicious.

Does anyone have reason to assume otherwise and I'm only overanalysing the situation and worrying for nothing (which I certainly hope I'm doing here)?

By the way, it was very subtle of delicious, to log everyone out just so they had to log in again and could accept the opt-in. I found it amusing.

[just_chiara]

I'm not too worried about it. On YouTube you post actual content on the website that may or may not belong to you. On Delicious you only link to the source. I doubt they will enforce the TOS for fanfictions and the like.

[just_chiara]

Yeah, you're right, that is a possibility. I was thinking of personal accounts, and I still believe that those are not at risk. I mean, if they have to go through every single account while transferring them, they're never gonna get it done. But accounts with a huge number of bookmarks could indeed be noticed. Let's hope it won't be the case and they will simply ignore them. After all, unless you are looking for a specific kind of bookmarks (i.e. kinky fics), you're not going to find them.