TWO young men who made millions when they invented YouTube and sold it to Google are now trying to build another big idea: transforming a bookmarking site, Delicious, into something to suit all tastes.
They want to transform it from a niche product for techies into a mass market product for everyone.
When Delicious first appeared, it was called del.icio.us. No one could remember that, so owner Joshua Schachter bought the delicious.com domain as well.
It’s one of those sites that does one job, but does it very well.
With Delicious, you could save bookmarks quickly and easily, and give them any tags you liked. Later, you’d be able to browse your saved bookmarks by tag, or search through them by keyword.
It wasn’t a massive money-spinner, but those who used it, loved it. Then Schachter sold the site to Yahoo. Then he left. The site stagnated.
Enter Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. They had made gazillions by inventing YouTube and flogging it to Google, and they were looking for a new project.
So they bought Delicious, and last week unveiled the shiny, colourful, new version.
Frankly, a lot of the old Delicious fans were outraged. They bemoaned the missing features, the overly friendly graphics, the strange new ‘stacks’ concept that puts saved links into themed pages.
But Hurley and Chen aren’t aiming the new site at those old users.
They’re aiming their sights higher – much higher. Remember, they created YouTube. It went from nothing to one of the biggest websites in the world.
The disgruntled old-school Delicious users are jumping ship to alternative sites (such as Pinboard, www.pinboard.in).
Meanwhile, if you find yourself saving and sharing links on Delicious in the next year or so, it’s probably because Hurley and Chen have another hit on their hands.
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