A translation of the Yahoo! blog post on Delicious. [With apologies to John Gruber, who (as far as I know) invented this ‘translation’ format.]
Many of you have read the news stories about Delicious that began appearing yesterday. We’re genuinely sorry to have these stories appear with so little context for our loyal users.
[Shit. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This will affect how much we can get for Delicious.]
While we can’t answer each of your questions individually, we wanted to address what we can at this stage and we promise to keep you posted as future plans get finalized.
[We’re not going to risk another SNNAFU like this.]
Is Delicious being shut down? And should I be worried about my data?
- 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.
- [Technically, it’s still running. True we laid off the entire Delicious team, and everyone knows that once you get rid of the developers, a system is al but useless, but we’re going to highlight the technicality.]
[Yes, you should be extremely worried about your data.] [1]
- We’re actively thinking about the future of Delicious and we believe there is a home outside the company that would make more sense for the service and our users.
- [We’re sunsetting it with extreme prejudice.]
- We’re in the process of exploring a variety of options and talking to companies right now. And we’ll share our plans with you as soon as we can.
- [But not Joshua. Anyone but Joshua. Who does he think he is, carping from the sidelines as we kill his creation with that unique Yahoo! combination of neglect and active destruction? It’ll go to the highest bidder; or to the second highest bidder, if Joshua is the highest bidder.]
- As noted above, there’s no reason to panic.
- [There is every reason to panic. But we really don’t want anyone to dump your bookmarks out of Delicious right now. We desperately wanted to keep a lid on this so that the rats wouldn’t desert the sinking ship, thus compromising what anyone might might pay for said ship. Please don’t go.]
- We are maintaining Delicious and encourage you to keep using it.
- [We’ll keep the power on in the hope that some of you idiots don’t notice and keep using it till we can sell it. You’d better keep using it too, our we’ll be out of pocket big-time when it comes to the sale.]
- That said, we have export options if you so choose.
- [Run! For crying out loud, if you have any sense, grab your bookmarks and run.]
- Additionally, many services provide the ability to import Delicious links and tags.
- [Actually, that’s spot on.]
We can only imagine how upsetting the news coverage over the past 24 hours has been to many of you
[“We’re just shutting down delicious, not selling your children to gypsies. Get the fuck over it.” — @fakecarolbartz]
Speaking for our team, we were very disappointed by the way that this appeared in the press. We’ll let you know more as things develop.
[Speaking for Yahoo! (not the Delicous team, obviously; they have their pink slips): It’s so not fair. Yahoo! used to have the mojo. Now people treat us like we don’t even get the internet. As if. Just because Carol doesn’t have a flickr account doesn’t mean she still uses 35mm film and a fountain pen, you know. Yahoo!s are people too, and it really hurts when people like Thomas Hawk come up with crap like this:
Do you even realize what you have with Flickr? It’s the largest well organized library of images in the world. Not only that, it has a very strong social networking component. In fact, Flickr may represent (if managed correctly) your single biggest opportunity to launch a much larger and more lucrative social network (and stock photography agency as well). Have you spent any time in any Flickr groups? They are addicting. People live in them. They play games in them. All kinds of activity goes on in them every day. And if you took the time to really explore the social side of Flickr, you’d learn this, and figure out a way to grow it. (Quoted by Charles Arthur at Guardian Technology)
Tom Hawk is full of shit. Flickr’s next, and you can certain there’ll be no leaks this time. I’m sure Ballmer will give us a billion for it. Well, half a billion anyway. Hell, he could do that out of his own petty cash. Ballmer would be perfect for Delicious. He’d probably bring it up to date using Silverlight and ActiveX and make your bookmarks dance like Clippy.]
| [1] | But in all seriousness, no one who takes any care should lose anything. First, having made this public commitment, Yahoo! would probably face an even bigger backlash if it deleted the data now. Secondly, Delicious has always had some of the best export options around, and just about every other bookmarking site on the web will import Delicious’s exports. Just go here and save the resulting XML file and you’ll be safe. Better still, import the result to Pinboard or another site of your choice. |