Ask HN: Why did Delicious fail?

For me. at least here's what I think happened.

Way back in 2003/4, trusting a couple of guys with a social bookmarking idea and site seemed reasonable and useful.

In 2005/6, trusting Yahoo with your bookmarks collection and (at least part of) your social network around shared bookmarks was already looking sketchy. FAANG as an idea didn't really exist yet, but general wariness about what large advertising supported web companies were doing with your personal data was a thing at least some technical people wondered and worried about.

in 2009, an alternative showed up, run by someone who's name I recognised from https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_... and who's blog made him feel like "my kind of people", and someone I could trust with my bookmark collection way more than I trusted Yahoo.

For a while, I used both. Treating Delicious as the place my bookmarks were probably getting datamined by advertisers, and considering pinboard to be a somewhat more private place to save/share bookmarks (while still being on somebody else's computer).

By 2011 I'd decided it was totally worth it for me to pay this guy Maciej $9.84 for a lifetime subscription, in the hope that it'd allow him to keep his site/service running without the need/temptation to sell out to VC or FAANG or anyone.

In 2017, I found it hilarious the way that Maciej blogged about acquiring Delicious, and this helped cement the idea that he was "my people" and probably trustworthy enough to be the keeper of almost a decade's worth of bookmarks.

In 2021, I'm still using pinboard daily.

From March (when he quit his day job) to December 2005 he turned $2M into something between $15M and $30M. That sounds like a success to me. Most companies acquired by Yahoo end up “sun-setting”, so I don’t think there was anything particularly bad strategically about the del.icio.us business. There are many knockoffs making their founders money.

Totally out-competed and outmanoeuvred by Maciej...

:-)