'Net Features : delicious

Delicious Introduces Twitter Connector

Linc Wonham — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Social bookmarking site Delicious has announced an integration with Twitter that enables users to connect the two accounts to one another – allowing them to save any links from Twitter and add them to their profiles on Delicious.

The following is from the announcement on the Delicious blog:

The new Twitter Connector on Delicious gives you the option of tethering your accounts together, so any link you tweet, retweet or favorite on Twitter is also saved to Delicious. (Note to web speed junkies: sometimes the link-saving process can take a few minutes or more, depending on system demands, so be patient!)

Here are some features and benefits of the Twitter Connector:

• Every link you’ve shared via Twitter in the past (up to the last 3,200) will be imported into your Delicious account. (Delicious will ignore any duplicates)

• You can choose a link-saving protocol for future tweets, including a) saving each link from Twitter going forward; b) saving just the links in tweets hashtagged with #d; c) saving every link except those hashtagged with #d.

• You get to assign your own Delicious tag to every link coming from Twitter, and any hashtag included in your tweets (aside from #d) will be converted to unique tags on Delicious.

• Multiple Twitter accounts can be set up, each with their own discreet settings and preferences.

How Appetizing is the New Delicious?

Linc Wonham — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 22:00:00 GMT

When Delicious was acquired earlier in the year by the co-founders of YouTube, essentially rescuing a once-popular startup from a potentially disastrous affiliation with Yahoo, promise filled the hearts of users of the social bookmarking site. The updated website has now officially relaunched with numerous new features, and the reviews are starting to come in.

Among the new features are stacked bookmarks, enhanced imagery and increased sharing and saving functionalities. Saving links on Delicious makes it easier to find and share an assortment of Web content with friends and associates, and users simply have to add a bookmarklet to their browser toolbar or click “save” next to any desired link or stack.

A stack is a collection of links built around a common theme, and users can visit the “stack” tab on their profile pages and click “create stack” to get started. After choosing at least three links, adding descriptions and images, choosing a layout and assigning the order of links, users simply have to click “publish” to share the stack with others.

Browsing through stacks allows users to explore and share the content they find most interesting on the Web, but not everyone is delighted with the new Delicious. Many users have already complained about the not-so-seamless transfer of accounts from the old site to the new one, and others have expressed concern over their inability to manage their old tags under the new system.

The good news for users is that most of the new features continue to be under development and that Delicious has all but promised newer features still that have not yet been revealed. The first couple of days of the transition have been rocky to say the least, but almost all can agree that a newly operational site is an improvement over the near-death experience that Delicious experienced under the guidance of Yahoo.

Twitter is Today's Rising Star

Mike Phillips — Tue, 24 May 2011 16:39:00 GMT

Twitter has officially acquired TweetDeck, the Twitter management service popular with Twitter's most active users. This will streamline the entire experience for Twitter users and is an indication that Twitter is closer to embracing its role as an information hub and broadcast channel for those who find it most valuable. For marketers and business owners, TweetDeck and Twitter coming together should provide a more fluid experience and make Twitter an even more valuable tool.

But that's not the only new news concerning Twitter.

Twitter has also launched a new feature that will send email notifications when your account is followed, a tweet is re-tweeted of if another user marks one of your tweets as a "favorite." For some, this could result in a deluge of email but for others this provides an excellent way to maximize on your reach on Twitter. These notifications will help you strike when the iron is hot.

And finally, YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen have acquired Tap11, an analytics platform that can tap into the entire Twitter firehose and Facebook, as well as the ability to be linked to other social and publishing platforms. It's a strong move to enhance the social analytics capabilities for marketers and will become a part of AVOS, the new company from Hurley and Chen which earlier acquired Delicious, the social bookmarking service.

If these recent developments are any indication, Twitter has moved far beyond a curiousity for sharing that day's lunch menu and into a legitimate business tool.

Delicious Acquired; Will Bookmarking Rebound?

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:22:00 GMT

Social bookmarking service Delicious has been acquired by Avos, a new Internet company headed by YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen.

Hurley and Chen's vision for delicious seems to be to keep (and improve of course) the status quo. Accoding to the release, "Their vision for Delicious is to continue to provide the same great service users love and to make the site even easier and more fun to save, share, and discover the web's "tastiest" content."

"We're excited to work with this fantastic community and take Delicious to the next level," said Chad Hurley, CEO of AVOS. "We see a tremendous opportunity to simplify the way users save and share content they discover anywhere on the web."

Avos will work closely with the community over the next few months to develop features to help solve the problem of information overload - something which spurred much of the interest in the service (as well as its social aspect) in years past. "We see this problem not just in the world of video, but also cutting across every information-intensive media type," said Chen.

The question remains however if Hurley and Chen can reverse the steep traffic drop with a social bookmarking service alone in light of more engaging social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.

The State of Content Submission Sites

Mike Phillips — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:14:00 GMT

Content submission sites can garner a fair amount of traffic for a website. So it's good to know where your content stands the best chance of reaching the widest audience. Compete.com has returned new traffic results for March 2009, and the numbers suggest that most of these sites are doing extremely well, meaning they are still viable - if not essential - places to market brands, products and services. Of course the first focus should always be on your company, but you will want to take advantage of free promotional services.

Digg.com remains strong, getting more than 36 million visits per month, according to Compete. For the year, traffic at Digg is up 71.5 percent. The attractive part of Digg is that it is widely used, both in and outside of the Web professional industry, meaning that you have a good chance of making an impact with consumers, not just fellow marketers. The down side is that the very structure of Digg caters to those with connections and those who know how to make the system work for them. Otherwise Digg can take a lot of effort and time to be truly effective.

Twitter is far and away the fastest growing network online, both in terms of traffic and overall industry buzz. The site is up to 14 million uniques per month, up from 8 million last month (a 76 percent increase) and up more than 1,200 percent this year. There's no denying that Twitter is an important place to submit content, or at least have a presence. Be sure to take advantage of URL shortening services like bitl.y, cli.gs, or budurl to track how (and if) your content spreads through Twitter.

Then there are the rest. There are may niche content submission sites and some of them may hold real value, depending on your industry or focus. But for general purposes it makes sense to focus on those with the widest reach. Below is a chart from Compete.com analyzing five popular submission sites and their current traffic data: Newsvine, Propeller, Mixx, StumbleUpon and Reddit. (Article continues below)

Reddit holds the overall edge, in both traffic numbers and growth, closely followed by StumbleUpon. It's also interesting to see that Reddit has a very steady growth pattern, usually indicating a site with staying power. Also note that all but one of these services (Propeller) is experiencing growth. And while the numbers of any of these sites might suggest it's simply not worth the effort in comparison to Digg or Twitter, it could be argued that while these sites are growing, now is a good time to get involved and stake your claim.

It should also be noted that StumbleUpon, while used as a submission site by many, is not necessarily intended to be a content submission site. It might fall under the category of content discovery. And, for that matter, Delicious.com could fall into that category as well. Delicious had over 1.8 million unique visits in March, a 13 percent boost from February 2009.

Submitting content to these sites and establishing a reputable presence (including networking and making influential friends) can take an extraordinary amount of time. Sometimes too much to be worth the return. Therefore, it's always important to use your analytics to closely monitor the returns you are getting for your efforts. If you see that site visits from one particular network are resulting in high bounce rates, limited time-on-site or any other factor detrimental to your overall goals, don't be afraid to jump ship. Or find the network(s) with the highest return toward your goals and focus on those instead.

Yahoo Buzz Opens to All Publishers

Mike Phillips — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:55:00 GMT

It's official, Yahoo's Digg-style Buzz is now open to all publishers. Unlike Digg, one of the main features of Buzz is to push content to the home Yahoo page - a chance for publishers to gain a monumental amount of attention and traffic. In addition, Buzz's algorithms take into account search engine popularity (so it takes a little more than voters gaming the system) and there's a push to feed Buzz stories into users' personalized Yahoo (my.yahoo.com) pages - another good source of significant attention. Through Buzz, after submitting you will also be able to share content through Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Facebook and Propeller.

Simply put, Buzz cannot be ignored. Publishers have a big opportunity to hit an enormous audience - far, far beyond Digg or any other single bookmarking service. Like anything else, the earlier you start, the better.

Yahoo Launches Delicious 2.0

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 15:16:00 GMT

Yahoo has revamped its popular social bookmarking site Del.icio.us, rebranding it as simply Delicious.com.

Yahoo claims the new site is faster (thanks to an upgrade of its server system) and easier for users to store, describe, and share information among the 5 million Delicious users. Other changes include those to the length of descriptions. Delicious users in the past were limited to just 255 character to define their submissions but it has now been raised to 1,000 characters. If you don't have a Delicious account, definitely sign up today and test the new version. It's a great way to find noteworthy content and network with your peers.