The social bookmarking site Delicious has just had a make-over.
And I’m still getting used to it.
2008
The last time Delicious had a make-over was back in 2008 (when it went from being Del.icio.us to being Delicious. Click on this link to see a video that was released at the time to “show” the differences. This post by Demetrius gives a side-by-side comparison.
Not everyone liked the new design. Nathan Bowers posted a long listed of “issues” he saw with the 2008 redesign (along with a marked-up screen shot). See his interesting post here. A lot of the criticisms he made, had to do with white space.
2011
Fast forward to present day & Delicious has been bought by AVOS (former founders of YouTube, and after several months, the social bookmarking site has a new face & is back in beta.
What this effectively means is that the changes to Delicious ain’t over yet. In fact, it seems that Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are open to suggestions about the site. In fact, in a Delicious blog post they use a Marty McFly (Back to the Future) quote to describe how they felt:
“What if they say I’m no good? What if they say, ‘Get outta here, kid, you got no future?’ “
And what are the changes?
They have introduce “stacks“. These are groups of related bookmarks links, that users can create and make available for other users. Stacks are demonstrated in a You Tube video that was posted at the same time,
The whole site has been redesigned. There is also a lot of white space – the links are now further apart from each other. And…they have stripped out a lot of other features.
Click here to see the “what’s new” list
And the public reaction?
Well – if you read the comments under the on the You Tube site, you’ll notice that there are a lot of unhappy people, who do not like the new design. (You’ll also notice that, in comparison to the number of views, there really are not a lot of comments).
I’m sure these comments are valid. For many, many years, Delicious has been more of a “personal on-line list of bookmarks links which users have been able to tag”. It wasn’t particularly “fluffy” (in a Web2.0 way), but it was functional.
And Delicious was like this. Not the most elegant of social bookmarking tools (like a standard mobile phone in a Smart Phone world), but for the hard-core users, it was exactly what you needed.
Now Churley & Chen have added some of the Web 2.0 fluffiness, Delicious is a different tool. Not everyone is going to like it.
Do I like it?
No.
For many, many years I also used Delicious for capturing useful links for future reference. Then I discovered Diigo, which is now my favourite tool for capturing my favourites.
But…the one thing I really did like about Delicious was it’s “Recent” bookmarks page. This listed all the links that people around the world were saving. It gave me an interesting insight into what was interesting people, and I would often make a game of trying to look for patterns.
But that wasn’t the main reason I would view the “Recent” page. I was always looking for interesting links that I could share with others in the twittersphere. By frequently refreshing the “Recent” list I was getting some good stuff. (You could also say I was using “crowdsourcing” to tell me what I should be reading). And this is something that I can’t do easily with Diigo.
The new Delicious still has a “Recent” page, but it is now split into two tabs. One shows all the new “Stacks” that people have created, and the other shows the list of recent links. It’s bad enough that every time I do a page refresh the “Recent Stacks” tab is displayed, but when I do click on the recent links tab, there is now so much white space (and tags, and descriptions) that I only see the top two “recent” links. I have to scroll down the page to see anything else.
I know that his is not a big deal, but it does mean that Delicious is no different than other of the other social bookmarking sites. And, therefore, there is no real reason for me to type “www.delicious.com” into my browser address bar any more.
But wait, there is hope…
As I mentioned above, Delicious is beta once again. So, maybe I can suggest a few tweaks.
Let the user decide:
- which tabs they want to see by default
- the amount of detail they want to see (links only; link + tags; link + tags + description; etc)
Steve, Chad… are you listening?…
Note – On the AVOS blog site, there is a request for feedback with only an option to send an e-mail. Seems a strange (and old fashioned) way to ask for feedback (especially in a Web 2.0 world), but I guess they didn’t want lists and lists of flaming criticisms (such as on the You Tube site).
Related articles
- Delicious hopes new taste will prove a hit (gigaom.com)
- The Rebirth of Delicious.com – and in Stacks (lehsys.com)
- Delicious Returns From the Dead With Some New Bookmarking Features in Tow (gizmodo.com)
- Delicious relaunches with mix of old and new (news.cnet.com)
- The new Delicious is officially live – but will laziness kill it? (digitaltrends.com)
- Can Delicious’s Redesign Make the Company Cool Again? (mashable.com)