YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steven Chen have a new goal: Remake social bookmarking site Delicious so that it appeals to the general public, reports The New York Times.
Their company, Avos, acquired Delicious in April after its previous owner, Yahoo, put it up for adoption due to the platform’s inability to catch on with a broader audience. When AVOS took over Delicious, it was unclear what the Internet savants had in mind. Their master plan to make Delicious palatable for the public at large — not just for technology aficionados — has begun to come into focus.
In remaking Delicious, which allowed people to share links with their friends, the 15-member Avos team must figure out how to make it easier for people to discover new content online. Each day, countless websites and online properties pump out an endless stream of news, pictures, videos, articles, stories, games, comics and an untold variety of other content. And yet, finding something new remains a challenge — a challenge Hurley, Chen and the rest of the Avos crew are working diligently to win.
“Twitter sees something like 200 million tweets a day, but I bet I can’t even read 1,000 a day,” Chen told The New York Times in an interview. “There’s a waterfall of content that you’re missing out on.”
“There are a lot of services trying to solve the information discovery problem, and no one has got it right yet,” he added.
Hurley and Chen’s idea of what’s need to “get it right” sounds suspiciously familiar. In fact, their new version of Delicious appears to have much the same functionality as the original Yahoo product (which, essentially, failed), but with entirely redesigned software and user functionality.
New Delicious will reportedly group content around certain topics, like sporting events, TV shows or Apple’s latest product release, for example, into browseable “stacks.” It is through this stacking that users will be able to find new content. In addition, users will be able to use Delicious to make their own stacks around things they are interested in.
It will be interesting to see how the new Delicious will stand up to competitors, which could range from Flipboard to Reddit. Luckily, it’s set for launch later this year, so we won’t have to wait long to see.
