Delicious.com loses its holy grail

I just realized that:<p>A) I don't even use delicious for anything but storage, basically; it's where I keep most of my browser bookmarks, via a plugin in my browser.<p>B) If delicious isn't making money hand over fist, it may not survive more than a couple more years.<p>I need to back up my delicious bookmarks, post-haste.

I have never, to my knowledge, been on the Delicious front page. However, they're the only social bookmarking I have ever had success with. Slap that beautiful, beautiful Delicious button which says "X people have saved this" (social proof!) on a meaty reference article aimed at geeks and you'll get a long-tail stream of tech-oriented linkerati visiting that page for years, rather than the typical big-one-minute-gone-the-next tidal wave of ADHD chipmunks hopped up on crystal meth.<p>This has resulted in a few of my reference articles getting more than enough links to justify the pixels.

Delicious is one of the Web's most under-rated services. I've been a heavy Delicious user since 2004 and it's invaluable to me. Not just to store bookmarks but to find stuff I <i>didn't</i> bookmark that I just remembered about.<p>For example, let's say I remember seeing a site about an awesome new WordPress theme a few weeks ago. I can go to <a href="http://del.icio.us/popular/themes" rel="nofollow">http://del.icio.us/popular/themes</a> and chances are I'll find it. If not, I can go through the tag pages (say, <a href="http://delicious.com/tag/wordpress+themes" rel="nofollow">http://delicious.com/tag/wordpress+themes</a>) until I find it. Google does not even compare when it comes to finding content in this way.<p>Even if I backed up my Delicious account and hosted it myself somehow, it still wouldn't have as much value as it does when combined with 100,000+ other people's links.

What is up with those crazy guys that took over Delicious at Yahoo!?<p>Not only do I not want Delicious to be a Tweetmeme clone, but the front page has a two column layout with an empty second column unless you switch away from the fresh tab... what?

This article is garbage. Delicious is not Digg and it's not Reddit and if you're only using it to boost traffic to your site - you have no fucking clue what this service is actually about.