Yahoo! Buys del.icio.us, does del.icio.us lose value?

Yahoo! Buys del.icio.us, it will be interesting to see how quickly it gets connected to the other Yahoo properties.

In particular, I think there is a way del.icio.us is used to store placemark equivalents. I like the ability in local.live.com to just right click on the map and have that create a point. Using del.icio.us to manage those with Yahoo Maps would be cool...

I think del.icio.us could really lose value if they don't remain an open application thing. I think Yahoo! basically did the right thing with Flickr, even if there was some whining about the change to using the Yahoo ID system, there's a lot to be said about common identity as the basis for integration. I also like how Yahoo opened up the Maps geocoding API, which could not have been cheap to do, but is the right thing to do.

I expect to see the same integration and consolidation thing happening for del.icio.us, which potentially makes it a lot more useful, or could mean people just stop using it. There is some value to del.icio.us independence that is being lost, but hopefully the integration gains are greater. I think of it as a corporate mash-up: Yahoo buys del.icio.us so that they can do official mash-ups with all of their assets. You just have to hope they don't do anything to disable all of the unofficial things that already exist.