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Yahoo Just Pissed Off The One Group They Shouldn’t With Delicious Closure
During the time CN hoster Rackspace was down (just about three hours!), I read some of the posts regarding the decision by Yahoo to close the web bookmarking service Delicious. I remember years ago that Delicious was a big traffic driver if you hit the front page…no idea if this is still the case as CN hasn’t made the home page since the Jets had a winning season.
You will probably see 50 “top x delicious replacements” posts over the next few days – Zee’s Next Web appears to have posted the first list. I would ask that someone in the Portland area check in on ReadWriteWeb writer Marshall Kirkpatrick over the next few days as I know how much he passionately cared about Delicious.
I am not going to reblog the facts of the case – you can read 100 other posts for that. But I did realize something by reading the posts and the messages on Twitter. Yahoo just pissed off the one group they shouldn’t have. That group? Developers.
I’ve written in the past that Yahoo should have learned to embrace the developer community. I believe Yahoo would be a much stronger company today had they realized that getting developers excited about your offerings means more usage of said offerings. If you look at Apple and Google, the developer community is what made their devices a success. The iPhone or Android phone would NEVER be the huge moneymakers and game changers if it wasn’t for us, the developers.
When I think of building an app using an API, I can’t remember the last time I thought of using Yahoo – whether it’s for search, maps, etc. I go to Google because while Google isn’t known for customer service, they do seem to care about developers. And now I wonder if any developer will want to work with Yahoo when they know that services in their area might be closed at any time.
Look, we all know that Delicious probably isn’t used by mainstream Internet users. My mother isn’t saving her card club website on delicious – she saves it on AOL or in Internet Explorer. But Delicious did have a very passionate community (just see Marshall’s post) of early adopters, developers and other techies who used the service on a regular basis.
I’d love to learn what it actually cost to run Delicious. I just can’t imagine that it was a huge expense. My guess is that the Yahoo executive team saw no revenues coming from the Delicious line item and cut it. Sometimes it’s about goodwill.
I am sorry Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, but I think you just made a huge mistake. One that will sting today but will hurt for a much longer period of time.
[...] Delicious. Many tech bloggers were very upset at the non-announcement by Yahoo. I believe that Yahoo made developers angry by closing (now they are selling) [...]
Agreed. I was actually using the Traffic API in something and its pretty annoying to have the plug just pulled one day.
The only thing I use regularly of Yahoo’s still is Pipes and flickr, and after all this sunsetting of other products I’d be wary of using Pipes in the future. Flickr I imagine isn’t going anywhere, but this definitely gives pause to flickr API dependency as well.
[...] as Allen Stern notes, Google does have a special appeal to the tech crowd for its developer-friendly moves. Stepping in [...]
Carol Bartz is not interested in developers, or early adopters, or any of “us.” Get with the program people. Bartz is about maximizing revenue, minimizing cost…period. Yahoo is becoming the Dell of the internet portal/mail/search space, specializing in efficient delivery of what they see as commoditized net technologies.
That’s not to knock Yahoo, it’s just the direction that their exec team has chosen. Time will tell if it ends up working. But I think expecting Yahoo to care about developers is like expecting Dell to design something innovative.
[...] as Allen Stern notes, Google does have a special appeal to the tech crowd for its developer-friendly moves. Stepping in [...]
I am a developer and I am angry. I was looking for alternatives to delicious just few weeks ago and in the end I decided to stay with delicious as it is simply the best in there. And now it is closed – just great.
I was talking about this with somebody, why on earth do these companies (yahoo, google, etc) do acqui-hire acquisitions where they lose the people within a year or two and let the product lie fallow? I genuinely wonder what’s the point, frequently it’s not a competitive product to something the company already offers. The employees are locked up with 12-24 month retention contract at best. The products…start dying the moment of acquisition (flickr being a notable exception). Rarely does the technology work its way into the company (whether due to shifting strategies or internal politics). I mean, do these companies buy these startups with no integration plan? Or do they fail to execute?
well supposedly the idea is that yahoo (or whoever) wants the person for some other role within the company so they buy the startup to get the person. i wonder in how many cases did that even work out well.
Josh doesn’t even work for Yahoo, and did;’t seem to contribute much to the company after the purchase. So did that work? No.
haven’t all the developers already moved to pinboard months/years ago?
All that said, though, Google has been guilty of shutting down services and APIs in the past, as well.
shut down what makes sense to shut down – for example, upcoming = shut it down.
You mean like when thhey shut down google notebook? I’m still using it today… Because they still support it, just no more updates.
Well, that’s one more reason to hate Yahoo! Google know that users are using a service. So, they don’t “shut down” them. They just stop updating. I also have access to Notebook till not and it is a good tool.
The only way the Jets can win is to have their strength coach and a bunch of inactive players on the sidelines to trip people!
Are you talking about the Winnipeg Jets? Because the New York Jets are guaranteed to have their 3rd winning season in a row. Heck, they were in the playoffs last year.
yes the NY Jets :) they play in the peewee league – winning season is like 12 wins not 9