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Delicious Gets a New Look and a New Domain

August 8, 2008

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Screenshot of the New Delicious

Screenshot of the New Delicious

One of my favorite social media sites, the social bookmarking site Del.icio.us, got a major overhaul about a week ago. Not only did the site get a whole new look, but they’ve cast off their strangely unique domain name for a more conventional one.

Delicious Bookmarks

If somehow you aren’t familiar with Delicious then you are missing out.

Back in the day the only way we had to save a link to a web page we wanted to be able to referr to down the road was to “Add to Favorites” in our browser. Trouble is that method quickly became unwieldy.

With the hierarchical organization of most browser favorites folder lists it grew harder and harder to keep bookmarks organized in a way you could find the page you wanted when you wanted it. Browser favorite lists weren’t searchable.

Then along came Del.icio.us with their funny domain name. With Del.icio.us you can save as many bookmarks as you wanted. They are searchable. And because you can add a few tags to each bookmark to make them even easier to find.

Very nice.

You can choose whether your bookmarks are public or private, or a mix of both. I have a mix with hundreds of private bookmarks and hundreds more that I share with everyone.

And not only that but there was a social component to the site. So in addition to being able to search your own bookmarks, you can search the public bookmarks that other folks have saved on the site. That can give you more targeted results than the major search engines at times.

Overhaul of Delicious

Now Delicious has whole new look. The design is simpler and has a more professional look, at least to my eye.

But what really got my attention is that the site is now at Delicious.com instead of Del.icio.us and that’s a major change. Especially for a site that big.

Makes me wonder how much they had to pay for that domain. I bet it wasn’t cheap.

In the long run I think it will be well worth it for them.

Comments

27 Comments

  1. Brad Shorr says:

    Hi Chris, you are not exaggerating to call the new Delicious an overhaul. I use it a lot, and so far the usability of the new site is far better all the way around. I didn’t notice the domain change, but I’ll bet they were glad to get out from under the old one.

  2. Margaret says:

    Delicious gets a new look?!!!!! I haven’t been by to visit here in a few months and it looks like Chris has a new look. I love it! It’s awesome. Great job!

  3. John Doe says:

    I think the significant difference is simply the new domain name is much more sensible. How many times have people who are not familiar with the awkwardly and unusually name http://www.del.icio.us made mistakes, given up and gone somewhere else. I myself after knowing the name “Delicious” still quite often made mistakes years after knowing the domain name. It is not easy to remember because the name is not divided up by syllables.

    For me quite simple I shall be a new regular of Delicious simply because I can remember it more often!

    I have to applaud Yahoo, however I would imagine that the previous owners could probably not afford to purchase the http://www.delicious.com domain name. I should imagine its worth was in the hundreds of thousands or millions possibly.

  4. Wait a second, for as long as I can remember, Delicious has owned Delicious.com as well, which if you go to that domain, doesn’t redirect to del.icio.us (it’s the same website, but for some reason, they choose not to change the URL in the URL bar). Delicious is a great site though, fantastic way to organize your bookmarks. Never press Cntrl + D again (oh wait, I just pressed it and the Delicious bookmark saving function came up; that’s nice).

  5. wilhb81 says:

    Personally, I do love the Delicious’s brand new look here, as it’s more vibrant and systematic to me…

    No matter what the changes that Delicious done, I’m always support them :)

  6. Namington says:

    Does anybody know more about the acquisition of the domain name? How much? Who owned it?

  7. Eiffel Tower says:

    Delicious is simply the best. I like the new look too.

  8. Firefoxer says:

    @Namington
    Not really, but i thing it was a huge amount of money. ;-)

  9. TeasasTips says:

    I’m glad delicious got with it….one of the things I hated was my inability to remember their “unique” URL. LOL…it was a minor thorn for my memory. But, I didn’t know they had changed their design, thx 4 the info.

  10. Yeah I agree, it looks ALOT cleaner and tight now!

  11. James says:

    Delicious is a good site, but I have been having better results with Digg.

  12. Forex Trader says:

    wow, never even noticed they changed their domain name. design looks a lot better too.

  13. Bean Jones says:

    Put me in the camp that thinks that the more streamlined design is easier to navigate. I’m glad they changed the domain name, though. It’s been pretty hard to spell it out to people who are new to the site.

  14. I like delicious better than Digg and Slashdot because it seems like the bookmarks are higher quality than that of Digg. Sometimes Digg has the darndest things and furthermore sometimes it’s bogus information.

    Amber

  15. Delicious is something that i have just started to work on. I find it quite useful.

    The new look has made it a bit more cooler product :)

  16. It was time that Delicious had a make over and this new make over is brilliant.

    I think that this a good example of how constant innovation and clever changes can make your brand much more popular and interesting.

  17. Webmaster says:

    DIGG is still going to rule for a long time and the major reason for that there is so much of existing users for it.

    I dont think there is much scope for delicious to come up because of the pressure that DIGG is putting on it.

  18. I dont think that is true, the point is the users of delicious are more specialized and I think therefore has more of a future.

    This is something that we have to understand.

  19. Furniture says:

    Well the change in domain name was something that was needed, I think there was some mix ups due to the domain.

    The new look is good too, but I just hope they do not go dwon on quality.

  20. Jason B. says:

    I am a huge user of delicious. I think the new upgrade is fantastic coming from someone who uses delicious everyday.

  21. John says:

    I think it looks great.

    Now they past the standard domain name test; you can tell it to somebody and they understand without having to explain it.

  22. Am I the only one who loved their old domain more? Their domain was the most innovative I had ever come across. They said that their old domain name resulted in a loss of many potential traffic, which is however, true. Oh, about the new features, they are just better than before.

  23. The makeover at Delicious has improved the usability a lot.
    The new domain name also makes it a lot easier too.

    I guess Delicious has to be added to my website together with Digg, Technorati and Stumbleupon immediately! :-)

  24. TaunT says:

    good bookmarks service
    using it very often

  25. van sales says:

    I prefer Digg more than Delicious. I’m the type who types URLs rather than rely on search engines. So I have a hangup over Delicious’ URL. It’s hard to remember how the syllables are divided by the dots! Is it del.ici.ous, or de.li.coius, or what? I get this way everytime. But it’s a good service, though, I use it also. I just access it using My Favorites. :)

  26. Faux Flowers says:

    Delicious sound a really interesting social network.. i will surely register out there, thanks for this great post !

  27. Malta Hotels says:

    Delicious.com is great and all, but i prefer Stumbleupon for my bookmarks. It’s a sexy social bookmarking site!

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