---
title: "Delicious Preview – Next Gen Search For Yahoo?"
date: 2007-09-07
author: "Richard MacManus"
categories:
  - name: "ReadWriteWeb"
    url: "/category/readwriteweb.md"
tags:
  - name: "2007"
    url: "/tag/2007.md"
---

# Delicious Preview – Next Gen Search For Yahoo?

![](https://web.archive.org/web/20110811205200im_/http://rww.readwriteweb.netdna-cdn.com/images/delicious_logo_sept07.png)A new version of [Delicious](https://web.archive.org/web/20110811205200/http://preview.delicious.com/) (sans dots) was released as a private preview today. I got an invite and have been poking around. Techcrunch got the exclusive on the story, so they have a [full review up](https://web.archive.org/web/20110811205200/http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/06/exclusive-screen-shots-and-feature-overview-of-delicious-20-preview/). But in my initial quick tests, a couple of features immediately stood out for me. We’ve written a number of times before on Read/WriteWeb about how del.icio.us, sorry Delicious, can be used as a very effective **search engine**. Likewise, Alex Iskold has also written before about Delicious as [a recommendation system](https://web.archive.org/web/20110811205200/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/recommendation_engines.php):

> “…the del.icio.us approach holds intriguing possibilities of self-organizing classification and recommendation systems. With enough users and more tweaking, social tagging can result in a system that works equally well for books, wine and music.”

In another post, Alex [ also called it](https://web.archive.org/web/20110811205200/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_social_sites_reveal_audience_likes.php) a “a gem of hidden information”. Indeed, given that some of the comments on our [10 Future Web Trends](https://web.archive.org/web/20110811205200/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/10_future_web_trends.php) post suggested crowd sourcing as a future trend worth watching, it seems to me that Delicious as a general crowd-sourced search solution is close to becoming a reality. As an example, a quick search for “web future” in Delicious Preview displayed a lot of popular (and some very old) links. But they were quality links, useful resources. Which is mostly what you want from a search engine.

So Delicious Preview is kind of like PageRank, only it’s run via crowd sourcing. It’s not an algorithm that primarily determines results (although that is a part of it), but thousands of ‘votes’ by Delicious users.

Another thing worth noting is Delicious’ move towards becoming a social network, as founder [Joshua Schachter spoke to R/WW about](https://web.archive.org/web/20110811205200/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/delicious_social_network.php) exactly one year ago. Some of these networking features are already on the current del.icio.us, but have become more refined in the new version. Here’s a couple of screenshots.

Overall, Delicious still feels like an experiment in progress. But there could be profound implications for Delicious’ owner, Yahoo – particularly in search. Yahoo is known to be pushing ‘social search’ as a way to compete with Google (Answers, Flickr, Delicious, etc), and the new Delicious Preview is another move in refining that vision.

*Originally published on ReadWriteWeb ([archived copy](https://web.archive.org/web/20020204040018/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/delicious_preview_next_gen_search.php))*