Yahoo! (remember the exclamation point, folks) is apparently shutting down a bunch of its “underperforming” websites, according to news that raced around the Internet today. The screenshot from a corporate webcast showed that among the likely casualties are AltaVista — okay, raise your hand if you even knew AltaVista still existed — and Buzz (not that Buzz, the OTHER Buzz), and “MyBlogLog” — anybody? — and something called AlltheWeb, and Delicious…
Wait, what?
Yes, the site that a lot of nerds use to share bookmarks, the one you might remember as del.icio.us, is, according to reports, about to die. That’s not good if you’ve been using the service, but there’s at least a simple way to save what you’ve stored there, and Lifehacker has helpfully provided instructions: Just go to Settings>Bookmarks>Export, export your bookmarks into an HTML file, import the file into your browser, and there you go. Tags and notes won’t import, but they’ll be in the actual HTML file if you need them.
Or, in the comments, someone suggests Diigo, a similar service that allows you to import Delicious bookmarks AND tags. So you have a few options, although no endorsements here — I jealously guard my bookmarks from all prying eyes, foreign and domestic.
Anyway, RIP Delicious, seven years and two months young. I never used you, but it was nice to know that I could have.
MORE: There’s also Pinboard, a for-pay option. Read its pros-and-cons lists before you decide.
UPDATE: The folks who run Delicious are saying that they’re looking for a way to continue under new ownership. The wording is vague and exactly what’s going on is unclear, but at least there’s hope.
HT: Lifehacker and Matthewdumptruck in the comments below.
Image: Yahoo/Delicious
Hey! Just wanted to let you guys know that we just launched a del.icio.us alternative at http://www.hoarde.rs . You can easily import the bookmarks you’ve exported from deli.cio.us per the instructions in the above post.
We actually have a revenue model so no matter what happens to del.icio.us in the future we’ll still be around and are working hard to continue developing our site.
Check it out over at http://www.hoarde.rs !
BREAKING NEWS:
Delicious is NOT going away! Just being sold…
http://gawker.com/5714703/yahoo-not-killing-delicious-after-all
FFS Delicious was one of the only things Yahoo was good at… and this is surprising news, too – because their blog shows updates as of December 9th. What’s next? YUI?
I will mourn the site that finally made me learn its proper spelling. R.I.P. delicio.us. 🙁
Recommended tags: WTF sad areyoufreakinkiddingme news itwasfunwhileitlasted
Carol Bartz’s response:
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-internet-freaks-out-over-yahoo-killing-delicious-2010-12#but-fake-carol-bartz-has-a-cogent-message-for-users-13
Goddamn, I just started using Delicious literally five days ago, and I was loving it.
I’ll try out this diigo thing.
Hey Babelfish users, evidently you haven’t been using it recently. It can be found at babelfish.yahoo.com where it’s been for months now.
Babelfish is not being shut down.
For a time, Del.icio.us was essentially the best geek search engine ever given the audience that used it.
Bummer. Use Babelfish particularly all the time. Find it works when others don’t.
(raises hand) Yes, I knew that AltaVista still exists. And Lycos. And Excite. And Webcrawler.
I will miss Delicious 🙁
Might use Google Bookmarks, which by the way, you can keep private.
I used to use Babelfish a lot, but then a thing came along called Google translate, and later, Google Chrome with built-in translate.
For Delicious, at least part of the functionality is provided by Google Chrome’s Syncing option, which will keep all of your browser settings and bookmarks the same across multiple computers.
(No I’m not a Google employee)
Yes, it appears that the whole thing is targeted for destruction, but there’s always the possibility that a) someone will buy the rights and technology, and b) parts of the doomed sites will live on incorporated into other Yahoo! properties; perhaps BabelFish will end up part of other Yahoo! search sites. One can hope….
(Man, I forgot about BabelFish. Used to use it all the time back in the day…)
*GASP* AltaVista?!? Does that mean the Babel Fish Translation site would get shut down, as well?!? THAT.MUST.NOT.HAPPEN! Not only because it’s a cool site that people (meaning, I) use all the time, but because it’s named after Douglas Adams’ babel fish from Hitchhikers!