MyWeb.icio.us? Yahoo acquires del.icio.us |
Busy week for Yahoo. News that they were going to add VoIP to messenger, then Yahoo Answers, and now the announcement that Yahoo has bought tagging sensation del.icio.us:
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.
Hmm, what does that last part mean? Yahoo is going to run competing services? They won’t be integrating the two services? This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me if that’s the long range plan. The first thing Yahoo could do is make their new acquisition easier to spell.
More cheer than jeer so far coming fast and furious from various corners like TechCrunch.. Pete Cashmore made a logo, but I like my headline better because it actually defines the conflict inherent in this deal. I’m surprised more bloggers aren’t zeroing in on that one.
Some are, though, like Greg Yardley:
… I suppose this means Yahoo will be pulling the plug on / merging in the very del.icio.us-like My Web 2.0, while as of this writing has only 424K saved pages and about a quarter of that in tags
Greg also points out that this is deal is a sign that community means something.
Rafat Ali muses: “Yahoo tried similar social efforts like Yahoo360, MyWeb 2.0 and MySearch, but couldn’t really crack the code, so to speak…so it has bought its way out of it instead.”
Del.icio.us creator Joshua Schachter adds to the mystery:
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.
This should complement Flickr nicely but really, I’m skeptical what this means for MyWeb. Guess we’ll have to just wait and see. Haven’t seen any details of the finances disclosed, though Om Malik speculates it could be between $10 to $15 million, while BusinessWeek’s Heather Green says she talked To Joshua Schachter and “there isn’t going to be a press release, which is typical of smaller deals.” While Greg Yardley hints at $30-$40 million (linked earlier).
The actual figures will come out later, maybe. Impact on Yahoo stock this week has seen a slight increase Tuesday, dip Wednesday and some rallying Thursday and today. Disclosure: I own YHOO stock.
Did this post make you go hmm?
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I’d read $30-$40 from elsewhere but if I had to bet money I’d say $25-$30 is about right. I think Om’s numbers are too low for USV to justify the sale - they’d hold out for more upside. But what do I know?
Comment by Greg Yardley — December 9, 2005 @ 5:31 pm PST
Tdavid, I totally agree with you on this. In particular, this bit:
> Yahoo is going to run competing services?
Exactly what I wondered.
With Flickr and Photos/PhotoMail, it definitely makes sense, since both services had separately developed quite a disparate community and user set.
But MyWeb is practically a ghost town. If I were Yahoo, I’d be figuring out a way to combine the best of both services into, perhaps, a brand new service… within 6 months.
The longer MyWeb and del.icio.us run as separate services, the harder it’ll be to integrate the two down the line.
Comment by Adam — December 10, 2005 @ 5:29 am PST
Thanks for the feedback Greg and Adam. The more I think about this deal, the less I like it. I’ve been using MyWeb more than del.icio.us and now I’m starting to wonder if I should export all my MyWeb links and import them into Furl or something on my own (various tagging programs out there to run on your own server or I could cook up something myself).
I think MyWeb has more going for it from a design and usability standpoint than del.icio.us but the latter has the community support. If by borrow from both, Jeremy means that MyWeb will benefit from being able to easily share data between the two, that could be a good, although oddly conflicting thing, but if he means they will strip what’s good out of MyWeb and put it into del.icio.us then the likelihood of MyWeb surviving is minimal which will suck for those of us who actually like that service. And definitely suck for developers using the MyWeb API because their programs would likely be broken.
As you said, Adam, the best of both services within six months is a good prediction, I think. I would be surprised if they ditch the del.icio.us name though. And if they try to force people to integrate with their Yahoo accounts it could be Flickr revolt all over again, so doubtful they will touch that dynamite.
A very curious acquisition indeed.
Comment by TDavid — December 10, 2005 @ 9:44 am PST