Yahoo continues with its Web 2.0 makeover. The company snapped up the bookmarking service del.icio.us today, according to a post by founder Joshua Schachter on his website. “We look forward to bringing you new features and more servers in the future,” he writes. (Scale matters!) Jeremy gives Yahoo’s take!
Niall Kennedy has more details. No mention of what they paid for it, but what will be the ultimate pay-off, its hard to say. It also is an acknowledgement that the whole My Web 2.0 thing wasn’t going to well?
You can read what Union Square Ventures, one of the investors in the deal, think about the deal. It has to be a good exit for them. No one clearly knows what was going to be the business model for del.icio.us, and how it could get past early adopter market.
Jeff Clavier writes, “I mentioned social bookmarking as one of the areas I saw a “bubblet” on the rise in my panel on “Investing 2.0” in Paris, with 10+ (if not 20+) companies developing very similar functionality to delicious – which had the first mover advantage but a reasonably limited barrier to entry.”
Eric Goldstein, co-founder of Clipmarks writes, “…what i’m more disappointed in is how celebrated the announcement is within the “web 2.0″ community. I guess it kind of saddens me that the annointed leader of the web 2.0 movement has sold out this early in its life. sure, they made some good money and that’s cool…can’t blame them. but doesn’t this kind of serve as a reality check to new companies that even the leaders are just in it to flip it?”
Of course, there is that whole Digg phenomenon, and emergence of newer competitors such as TailRank. What could be the price of this deal? The company had raised $1.3 million, and if that got the VCs around 25% of the company, my guess is the final price is between – $10 and $15 million. I am speculating here, and have no information. So treat it like that…. simple speculation.
Kudos to USV and the del.icio.us team for proving that business models don’t matter in the Web 2.0 economy when companies like Yahoo will snap them up just on the basis on being the new cool thing.
I don’t think del.icio.us ever generated one dime in revenues during its entire existence (aside from slapping some AdSense placements if that).
Hey, i’m the co-founder of Clipmarks and wanted to express my gut reaction to this announcement. My reaction might change, as gut reactions often do, but i figured i’d post it here (also posted it on the clipmarks site).
i’m kind of indifferent to the deal. it is what it is. what i’m more disappointed in is how celebrated the announcement is within the “web 2.0” community. I guess it kind of saddens me that the annointed leader of the web 2.0 movement has sold out this early in its life. sure, they made some good money and that’s cool…can’t blame them. but doesn’t this kind of serve as a reality check to new companies that even the leaders are just in it to flip it? i can’t predict what the fate of Clipmarks will be (good, bad or otherwise), but i guess it just disappoints me that delicious didn’t hang in there and try to fight. am i alone in this?
I think your readers should read the excellence article written by Jim Collins, author of “Built to Last,” in the March 2000 issue of Fast Company, “Built to Flip.” (http://www.fastcompany.com/online/32/builttoflip.html)
Congrats… I doubt they could have ever made money on their own and this is a good way to cash out.
Chances are yahoo is going up and buying everything 2.0 related so that other companies can’t get ahold of it.
I believe that what we define as web2.0 at its core threatens yahoo’s very existance. If they don’t crush or own the space they will lose billions in a couple of years down the road.
A business model based around user contributed content and AdSense ads isn’t entirely ridiculous. The cost of creating content is virtually zero, so how much money do you really need to make on the ads to be in the black?
10-15 would be my guess too. What is Google’s M&A team on holiday early this year?
Yahoo has been known to pay millions for businesses that didn’t go anywhere. I don’t think it’s all about profits for yahoo, as it is nipping the competitor in the bud.
now you don’t have to sign to del.icio.us to have a personal online bookmark,
what you only need is a pop3 account and bookmarkMail.
to add a bookmark you can send yourself an email with URL as a subject,
and you can fill the email body with the description.
and to see the result you can see it with bookmarkMail here,
and if you want to set up for your own server click here
some screenshot
1. send yourself an email
2. see your sent email in outlook(mail client)
3. login to bookmarkMail
4. see the bookmark
Google is going to fight Facebook and Microsoft on the top of the ladder! I think google is unmatched when it comes to versatility and advancement in technology. And they have the best search engine on earth, constantly being refined! Yahoo is to weak and will be merged with Microsoft soon!