Back in April, Yahoo announced that YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen had acquired social bookmarking site Delicious, and that they would keep the site up and running as part of their company Avos.
Yahoo said at the time, “While we love Delicious (and our users love Delicious), we wanted to find a home for the product where it can receive more love and attention. We think Avos is that place.”
It looks like that may indeed be the case, as Avos is giving Delicious a refresh. This is supposed happen “later this year,” according to the New York Times, which reports that Chen and Hurley say it will resemble the original Delicious, but with a new design using new software and new systems for tagging and organizing links. Jenna Wortham reports:
The home page would feature browseable “stacks,” or collections of related images, videos and links shared around topical events. The site would also make personalized recommendations for users, based on their sharing habits. “We want to simplify things visually, mainstream the product and make it easier for people to understand what they’re doing,” Mr. Hurley said.
Chen and Hurley reportedly want to solve the information discovery/overload problem that many others are trying to solve, but they may be headed for a similar path that others are also traveling. These solutions often tend to just become one more thing to look at, rather than a filter for noise.
The hard part is getting users to add one more thing to their daily routine. They’re going to have their work cut out for them in that regard, but it should help that Delicious is already an established, brand, which the two acknowledged in the NYT interview.
We’ll be on the lookout for what they come up with, but I’m starting to wonder if the information discovery/overload problem can really be solved. I think it’s more something just to deal with, and we all have our routines.
