What's cooking at del.icio.us
It's been a busy few months for the del.icio.us team — building new features, scaling-up our infrastructure to meet growing demand, and working with our Yahoo! and MyWeb colleagues to share ideas and integrate our technologies.
Context & Ripple Effects
Yahoo's December 2005 purchase of del.icio.us put the bookmarking service inside a larger web-property portfolio. The team is using that position to build features, add capacity for demand, and work with Yahoo and MyWeb on technology integration.
First-order effects
- del.icio.us users are the immediate beneficiaries of new features and infrastructure scaled for the service's growing demand.
- Yahoo and MyWeb become active product and technology collaborators rather than merely affiliated properties.
Second-order effects
- Technology sharing gives Yahoo a route to carry del.icio.us capabilities and product ideas across its own services, while del.icio.us gains access to the parent company's operational resources.
Third-order effects
- The move points to an acquisition model in which a standalone web service is developed as part of a broader portal ecosystem, with integration becoming as important as the acquired product itself.
The trend: Yahoo is using ownership of focused web services to combine their product development and infrastructure with its wider network.