Pinboard, a site you may have never heard of, has acquired the social bookmarking site Delicious in an all-money deal for $35000 US Dollars.
Delicious, or del.icio.us, was a popular social bookmarking site back in the days when sites like Digg made up the forefront of social news sites on the Internet.
Anyone could join the site, and add bookmarks to it using various tools that were made available. Users could vote on bookmarks, and being on the top bookmarks of a given day resulted in a good chunk of referrals from the site to whichever sites were listed there.
Interesting tidbit: Our first article about Delicious, Check your del.icio.us bookmarks, dates back to 2007 and reviewed a tool that allowed Delicious users to check their bookmarks for dead links. The first mention of Delicious dates back to 2005.
The site’s history is a troubled one, as it was sold no less than five times ever since its launch on the Internet. First to Yahoo, then by Yahoo to AVOS Systems in 2011, by AVOS Systems to Science In in 2014, and by Science INC to Delicious Media in 2016. Now, for the last time to Pinboard, a subscription-based social bookmarking service.
The announcement on the Pinboard blog highlights why Pinboard acquired Delicious, and what this means for Pinboard or Delicious members.
- Pinboard will set the Delicious site to read only on June 15, 2017. This means, that users won’t be able to add, edit or remove bookmarks from the site, and that the API will stop functioning.
- Users will be able to access their bookmarks, and all public bookmarks, even after June 15.
- The Pinboard developer plans to fix the Delicious export tool so that users of the service can use it to export their bookmarks.
All Delicious users are invited to create a Pinboard account. Pinboard accounts are available for $11 per year. The service is advertised as a “fast, no-nonsense bookmarking site for people who value privacy and speed”.
There are no ads or tracking on Pinboard, which should appeal to users who value privacy and don’t mind paying a couple of bucks per year for that.
Pinboard users may add bookmarks from any browser to their account, connect to Twitter, and sync with services such as Pocket or Instapaper. The service offers additional features such as full-text search, and dead link checking.
Now You: Do you use an online bookmarking or sync service for bookmarks?