Delicious Taggers Exploited, Stiffed?

Like Blodget, I don't think del.icio.us taggers were exploited, but I do think it's interesting that a company with no apparent business model could be flipped so quickly. Maybe acquirers are paying for eyeballs after all, or maybe it's something to do with what Von Hippel has been writing about....

Lead users are users whose present strong needs will become general in a marketplace months or years in the future. Since lead users are familiar with conditions which lie in the future for most others, they can serve as a need-forecasting laboratory for marketing research.

Link: Internet Outsider: Delicious Taggers Exploited, Stiffed?.

The answers, at least at last night's confab, were mixed.  My opinion: Until someone suggested the concept of exploitation, I assume that Delicious's taggers were the happiest bunch of users in the world.  Here was a cool new technology that allowed them to tell others what they found interesting, that allowed them to "vote," as it were, that allowed them to express themselves and influence others by virtue of their Internet exploration and editorial decisions, that allowed them to lead the vanguard of the next wave of Internet innovation, that allowed them, in some cases, to become famous within the growing community of Delicious fanatics, many of whom looked up to them and wished that they, themselves, were so talented and multi-faceted.

Comments

[Jack Moore]

As I recall, we smoked this stuff before. {insert old saw about 'forgeting history' here}