Delicious, the social bookmarking site that was largely responsible for making ‘tagging’ one of the defining elements in today’s web, has turned 5. The site launched back in 2003 and was one of the first companies to be profiled on TechCrunch. In December 2005 the site had its big payday when it was acquired by Yahoo, and has racked up 5.3 million users since launch.
The last year has been rough for delicious. In September 2007, we got a sneak peek at Delicious 2.0, a complete-code rewrite of the site that was due to introduce a more intuitive interface and some new features. In January this year there were hints on the Delicious blog that the release was imminent, but nothing materialized. By June – a full 9 months after our initial preview – Delicious 2.0 was still nowhere to be seen.
A week later delicious founder Joshua Schachter resigned from Yahoo, explaining that he had been largely sidelined by management. Finally, in July 2008, Delicious finally released the overhaul. As we’ve noted before, it’s a shame Schachter wasn’t around for the launch.
Now that Delicious 2.0 is finally out the door, here’s to hoping the company can correct its management issues and keep going strong, even without its founder at the helm. For more check out Yahoo’s announcement and the delicious blog.