Yahoo acquires del.icio.us - just don't make it a walled garden, like My Web 2.0!
As if acquiring the world's most innovative photo-sharing platform Flickr this year wasn't enough, Yahoo has just announced the purchase of the leading bookmark sharing site, del.icio.us. Joshua Schachter, the founder of Del.icio.us, wrote today:
"We're proud to announce that del.icio.us has joined the Yahoo! family. Together we'll continue to improve how people discover, remember and share on the Internet, with a big emphasis on the power of community. We're excited to be working with the Yahoo! Search team - they definitely get social systems and their potential to change the web. (We're also excited to be joining our fraternal twin Flickr!)
We want to thank everyone who has helped us along the way - our employees, our great investors and advisors, and especially our users. We still want to get your feedback, and we look forward to bringing you new features and more servers in the future.
I look forward to continuing my vision of social and community memory, and taking it to the next level with the del.icio.us community and Yahoo!"
Mike Arrington as usual got the scoop. Jeremy Zawodny of the Yahoo Search team has more details here:
"As Joshua writes, the del.icio.us team will soon be working in close proximity to their fraternal twin, Flickr. And just like we've done with Flickr, we plan to give del.icio.us the resources, support, and room it needs to continue growing the service and community. Finally, don't be surprised if you see My Web and del.icio.us borrow a few ideas from each other in the future."
Personally I'm thrilled Yahoo got del.icio.us, but I'm hoping they don't make it into a walled garden like they did with the My Web 2.0 product. Currently a user can export their data from del.icio.us, but they can't do that from My Web 2.0. I've written many times about this issue - I've even emailed My Web 2.0 senior managers, urging them to open it up. But still it remains a closed property... not very Web 2.0 :-( So I hope Yahoo doesn't ruin a good thing and close off del.icio.us. I'm sure they won't.