del.icio.us 2.0 announced as Digg deal eats dirt for Google

Davey Winder
Sunday, 27 July 2008 19:20

Business IT - Networking

It is just as hard to recall when del.icio.us, one of the original movers and shakers in the social bookmarking scene, was last updated. Founded way back in 2003, and acquired by Yahoo! in December 2005, del.icio.us 2.0 just cannot seem to get off the ground.

This despite, according to TechCrunch reporter Michael Arrington, the service being "feature complete and in private beta back" some 10 months back now.

In January the official del.icio.us blog talked about using the service on your iPhone, and mentioned an update of the service being available within a week. If that was del.icio.us 2.0 as interpreted by some, it never materialised.

And now, once again, we have an announcement on the del.icio.us blog. This time it is tagged as a service alert, has been posted by staffer Britta Gustafson and asks if you know what your password is.

The reason? Because after months of work, the new del.icio.us "is almost ready to come out of the oven. When we release it, you’ll be automatically logged out of your account and will have to log in again, due to some changes we’re making behind the scenes."

So there you have it. No firm release date as of yet, but the biggest hint that del.icio.us 2.0 will be launched real soon now.

Of course, it has taken so long that many will be asking if it really matters? With young pretenders such as the AOL driven Propeller, the eBay owned StumbleUpon and the Conde Naste (publishers of Wired magazine) with the newly open sourced Reddit have all stepped up to the plate and stolen the del.icio.us thunder somewhat.

Could the cruel irony be that in taking so long to launch del.icio.us 2.0 the opportunity to reclaim the captaincy of the social bookmarking boat might have already sailed?