Avoiding Microsoft+Yahoo!

February 1, 2008 3:46 PM

If MS buys Yahoo, where should I take my del.icio.us and flickr accounts to?

For those of you who prefer to avoid anything related to Microsoft whenever possible, have you thought about where you might take your Yahoo! services in the event that MS successfully acquires Yahoo!?

I've looked through old posts and found some tips on various services, but in light of current events I thought this might be an opportune time to ask anew.

I'm specifically interested in recommendations to where I might migrate my del.icio.us and flickr accounts to.

I've been looking at some more obvious options like ma.gnolia and Picasa but it would be great to hear your experiences of migrating (if you've already done it) or what else is worth considering.

Bonus points for non-Google products. I already enjoy Gmail and Google Calendar but I prefer not to have all my eggs in one ibasket.

(No offense intended to those who enjoy MS products and services, I just prefer not to use them, thanks).

posted by quarterframer to computers & internet (19 answers total)

As soon as I heard, I decided I'll be rolling my own del.icio.us clone (the alternatives really are nowhere near as good), but possibly migrating my photos to Smugmug, which comes on the recommendation of quite a few people.
posted by wackybrit at 3:53 PM on February 1, 2008

I don't know about del.icio.us but for me zoomr works just fine as a replacement for Flickr. (I changed because for me Flickr became too slow.)
posted by razorian at 3:54 PM on February 1, 2008

Instead of Flickr you could use 23.
posted by sveskemus at 4:34 PM on February 1, 2008

I would hope Microsoft wouldn't tinker too much with del.icio.us and Flickr. But, we're talking Microsoft, so anything is possible. I actually use a lot of Yahoo products and am not excited about the possibility of this happening. Without exaggerating, Microsoft has ONE product that I love - OneNote. Aside from that one piece of software, I'm not excited about their products. BTW, I would also miss Yahoo's MyWeb, which is like del.icio.us but caches the page in case the site you have bookmarked ever disappears.
posted by Gerard Sorme at 4:36 PM on February 1, 2008

One of the commentaries I read today suggested that Microsoft might sell off Flickr and del.icio.us. So don't necessarily move your stuff right now.
posted by MadamM at 4:56 PM on February 1, 2008

zooomr. Three O's (razo got the link right but spelled it wrong). It's obnoxious, but there it is.
posted by puddleglum at 5:00 PM on February 1, 2008

Smugmug has a HUGE security hole which fails to protect images which designate "private".
posted by crush-onastick at 5:08 PM on February 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

Well, doing it yourself would be the ultimate, future-proof option (ie. an alternate being purchased by MS or Google). Get a web server, domain name, and either build or download a photo gallery and link app. You could use a CMS like Symphony or Textpattern to manage both photos and links (and everything else too).
posted by fleeba at 7:13 PM on February 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

Wait until something bad happens to these applications before switching.
posted by Hildago at 7:30 PM on February 1, 2008

zooomr positions itself as a direct Flickr competitor, so I'm thinking that's your answer.
posted by evariste at 11:00 PM on February 1, 2008

Google's Picasa, while not as featured or "2.0" as Flickr, has a lot of potential.
posted by afx114 at 11:59 PM on February 1, 2008

Gruber thinks (quite rightly, IMO) that what MS is really interested in is the search and advertising of Yahoo. It's quite possible that they'd sell or spin off flickr and delicious.
posted by chrisamiller at 12:17 AM on February 2, 2008

If you want to go the self hosted route, I deployed scuttle as part of our Intranet at work and it seems to work fine, it support the del.icio.us API but I've not tried using it so no idea how good the support is. Its got a few quirks but no show stoppers.
posted by Z303 at 5:22 AM on February 2, 2008

Ma.gnolia.com is a excellent alternative to del.icio.us, and it will even import all your old del.icio.us bookmarks.
posted by bkudria at 10:51 AM on February 2, 2008

I love Netvouz for bookmarks. Tags and folders, checks for duplicates and broken links.
posted by timepiece at 6:10 PM on February 2, 2008

chrisamiller writes "that what MS is really interested in is the search and advertising of Yahoo. It's quite possible that they'd sell or spin off flickr and delicious."

Has MS ever sold off an unwanted section of their empire? I don't remember even a single instance.
posted by Mitheral at 6:22 PM on February 2, 2008

Mitheral: Bungie.
posted by adamrice at 11:05 AM on February 3, 2008

I've always been amazed that there weren't more sites out there like del.icio.us. Sure, there are other social bookmarking sites, but I'm not aware of any that do the tagging thing so effortlessly. Does Yahoo! own some sort of patent on the technology?
posted by brandnew at 1:40 PM on February 3, 2008

Belated thanks all. I'll be watching and waiting. But if it looks like MS is going to make a successful bid, I will probably go ma.gnolia or Netvouz and Picasa. I'm not gonna wait around for MS to sell/"improve"/neglect either one...
posted by quarterframer at 7:04 PM on February 10, 2008