I recently wrote a post about the changes that the social bookmarking site, Delicious, had made.
Since then I read other reports that the Delicious team have been working around the clock to fix things. There has been a lot of activity on their Facebook page as die-hard fans have been voicing their opinion over the changes.
I visited the site. There are a lot (and I mean “a lot”) of very unhappy people. The comments are almost 100% scathing of the changes that Delicious had made. I tried to read through all of the comments, but they just kept going, and going.
It seems that, in the hours after the “change”. a lot of functionality had been lost. This combined with the fact that no-one knew the changes were coming (Chad Hurley and Steve Chen hadn’t made any announcement), was what people were livid about.
I’m not certain, but it almost seems that the Delicious team were surprised at how many people were affected by this. Here’s a quote from a post “All Things D” published on the 26th September:
Expectations aren’t terrifically high for the new Delicious, given the rareness of tech comeback stories and the fact that Delicious was never really that popular.
(Looking at the comments on that post, you can already see a hint of the fury that was coming).
One thing that did strike me was the reaction from the Delicious people (“delishites”). It was quite responsive. They seemed to swing into action, and, when there was a valid complaint, they responded. They also set up a blog where they posted regular updates of their activities.
I was impressed. This seemed to be a company that was reacting to their users. And their users seem to be responding positively to this. There seem to be a change in the mood…
However…
Looking at Delicious’ Facebook page lately it seems that the positive “vibes” was short-lived. It seemed that, as more people discovered the “disaster” of changes that were made, that they have gravitated to the Delicious’ Facebook page to spray their fury on Delicious’ wall.
In any case…
In any case, it seems that Delicious are working hard to “fix” their product. In fact, when I logged in today I noticed that the new Delicious was starting to look more, and more like the old Delicious.
I’m curious how this will continue…
Note: here is one of the latest post on the “All Things D” post regarding the Delicious Redesign.
