Delicious 2.0: Scrumptious or Sloppy Seconds?
Here's another guest post by my Twitter pal Paisano. They are always popular so we hope to get him on here weekly from now on. For his previous posts, hit the "guest post" tag. Got something to say? If you are interested in writing a guest post for sarahlacy.com email olivia at sarahlacy dot com.
Delicious 2.0: Scrumptious or Sloppy Seconds?
Finally, Yahoo has released delicious 2.0 after three long years of stagnate captivity. I've been
quite vocal in my dissatisfaction with the way Yahoo has handled the once fantastic delicious ever since they acquired them in 2005. The frustration only intensified with several false announcements of an impending release. Well, it's a cold day you-know-where because delicious 2.0 has been unleashed! Here's an honest review.
First, let's start with the positives, ok? We'll go with the good news first then to the bad news.
The Yummy! Here's what they did right:
Faster performance
The new site is much faster so that's a big plus. Everything seems so much quicker. Every click and expansion of submenu's launches in a jiffy. Nice.
Better look and feel
Gone is the 1990s appearance but it still retains enough of the clean interface to resemble its ancient self. Good choices here.
New Inbox
The artist formerly known as "Links for You" has morphed into the new inbox. This is where bookmarks shared with you from members of your network will show up.
People feature
It's great to see who else has saved the same website to their delicious account. See image below (the blue box with the number inside tells you how many times that site has been saved to delicious):
Just click on the box which shows the number of people that have also saved the same website and you will see a list. Click on anyone and you will see the bookmarks they've shared. You can also add them to your network if you like what they share. The other element of this feature that's useful is the notes section which can reveal some interesting and informative info.
Network
Nothing's changed much here but it does look purtier. You get to see all the people who subscribe to your bookmark collection and all the people you subscribe to. This makes sharing bookmarks much easier because you can pick their name(s) when saving a bookmark to your collection online.
Private Sharing
Finally, you can share bookmarks with friends without making it public for everyone. The method is a little unorthidoxed but it works. For details on how to share private bookmarks see the Limited Sharing Options section below under The CRUMMY.
Subscriptions
I really like the subscriptions feature. You can subscribe to any tag that interests you which then turns delicious into a kind of news reader for those bookmark tags. For example, if you're interested in architecture you can simply subscribe to that tag (
http://delicious.com/tag/architecture) and keep track of any bookmarks saved on that subject.
Subscription bundles are also a useful way to "bundle" similar tags into one group of bookmarks you want to track. For example, a sports bundle would include baseball, football and hockey tags.
Tag Clouds
It's nice being able to see your own tag cloud of saved bookmarks. I wish there was a way to share this tag cloud with others though.
Most Popular Bookmarks
The nice thing about viewing the most popular bookmarked sites turns delicious into Digg. You get to see what sites people are really digging (sorry, couldn't resist). Here's the
most popular tag cloud which is cool to explore new sites.
Improved Search
You now have many different ways to search for bookmarks. You can filter your search by user, network, tags or combinations of each. It's vastly improved and appreciated.
Automatic Syncs!
Delicious now automatically synchronizes all of your online bookmarks with your local browser's bookmarks! You just need to install a special add-on for the type of browser that you are using.
Firefox Internet Explorer There's also a manual sync now button under options. Synchronization is a much needed option.
Note: Thanks to Stephen Hood for pointing us to these add-ons!
Many other cool tools
There are still many
cool tools like the widgets and badges that you can embed on your website. You can share your RSS feed of bookmarks too.
The Crummy! Enough of the pleasantries! Here's the low down on what they did wrong or could simply improve:
Limited Sharing options
Sharing is still weak. Gone is the annoying "all or nothing" sharing methodology but it still has a long way to go. You still can't share bookmarks with groups you create. However, you can now share them privately with individuals if you add them one by one in a tidious process.
Here's how it works: Go to your bookmarks on delicious, click the edit link under the bookmark you want to share. Here's where it gets weird. In order to share it you have to jump thru some unneccessary hoops by clicking the FULL SCREEN EDIT link at the top right of the screen:
This launches the full screen edit window which provides more options including the People tab at the bottom.
Notice that it displays everyone in your network that you can now click on to add to the tags section (it will include the for: prefix). However, in order to make it private and only visible for you and those you select you must select the Do Not Share option below the Tags section.
Like I said, convoluted and requires too many extra clicks. Still, glad it's there.
Still No Groups!
Still needed is a way to create Groups for special categories. For example, you can add all your coworkers to one group, family to another, real life friends to another, etc. etc.
Note: There's a new Network Bundles feature that looks and smells like groups but don't be fooled. Yes, you can create a "group" or network bundle for different types of people and add members of your network to those bundles but when it comes to sharing bookmarks you still have to click on one username at a time to share a bookmark with them. Also, it's still not private just for that group or bundle! It's still an all or nothing affair on delicious when it comes to sharing! Magnolia and others offer this feature.
Can't delete bookmarks from your own inbox!
Unbelievably, you are not the master of your own domain on delicious, especially when it comes to your inbox. You cannot delete any of the links that others have shared with you. Yahoo has stated that they will address this in the future.
Time to Merge Yahoo Bookmarks and MyWeb with Delicious!
This is what really burns my goat (huh?). Yahoo continues to improve their
Yahoo Bookmarks service and actually does some things even better than they do with Delicious! Even the appearance looks better.
Yahoo bookmarks lets you choose between a folder interface as in the image above or a Tag appearance. Delicious needs to offer those choices. It's something Google docs has done as well. It should be all about offering options.
The Yahoo toolbar has a very useful button that works with your Yahoo bookmarks account. Once again, delicious needs to take some notes here. Even the third party delicious extension for firefox pales in comparison to what the yahoo toolbar can do when it comes to managing your online bookmarks.
The best feature from Yahoo bookmarks is the ability to share bookmarks with groups! This is a feature still missing from Delicious! To add insult to injury, Yahoo has even launched a new service called MyWeb which also includes this share with groups feature! See image below!
You have the usual options to save a bookmark for yourself privately or publicly for everyone but notice the unusual option in the middle "Just these contacts". Yahoo's bookmarks and MyWeb allow you to control your contacts and create groups which you can then share bookmarks with. Why doesn't Delicious have this?
Checkout what the Yahoo Myweb team had to say in 2006 about sharing bookmarks and using groups to do so!
From: The MyWeb Team
Subject: Introducing A Simpler Way To Connect to People!
Today, My Web is unveiling an easier way to find and share the best of the Web: our new Contacts system. Here's what you need to know:
Adding Contacts
You can now add any My Web user as a contact without requiring them to accept your invitation. If you find someone with interesting links, just add them to your list of contacts. Once you add a contact, they'll receive a notification in our new messaging system. As part of this upgrade, changes made to your My Web contact list will no longer impact your 360 contact list, and vice versa.
Contact Labels
Let's face it – there are websites you'd share with friends that wouldn't necessarily be appropriate for certain family members (think poker buddies and mother-in-law ;-) Now you can keep your worlds separate by using labels to categorize your contacts. The labels are named friends and family by default, but feel free to rename them whatever you like. To start you out, we've labeled all of your current My Web contacts as friends.
We hope you enjoy the latest improvements! Read more on the My Web Blog.
The My Web Team
Uh, hello, Yahoo management. Can we get your different social bookmarking teams on the same page? Perhaps force them to work together in the same room? Obey the urge to merge, please!
My Conclusion:
Despite all the belly-aching, Over all I have to say that I'm happy that Yahoo has finally released Delicious 2.0! Yes, there's still a lot of tweak and fixes needed but the biggest hurdle has been cleared! They just need to get their development teams to work together. If they do that then I have no doubt that they will be the kings of social bookmarking for a long time to come!
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.
Hi -- Thanks for the review and the feedback. Regarding "Manual Syncs Stink", Delicious actually does offer automatic sync. The Firefox and Internet Explorer add-ons for Delicious both automatically sync your bookmarks from Delicious to your browser and back again (and the "Sync Now" button you mention is just a manual override). You can get the latest add-ons here:
http://delicious.com/help/quicktour/firefox
http://delicious.com/help/quicktour/ie
Thanks!
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