Interest in social bookmarking, a by-product of the social networking/user-generated content boom, came to a boil as Yahoo acquired Del.icio.us, a site that enables users to see and use their
contacts' bookmarks. Eight months later, Del.icio.us is still the best and most popular social bookmarking site, but recent comScore numbers show that usage has declined. In fact, TechCrunch says it's
"tanked completely." In April, usage peaked at 455,000 unique visitors and 4 million page views. By June, that number had dropped to 350,000 uniques and 1 million page views. That's a 22 percent drop
in unique users and a massive 75 percent drop in page views. Del.icio.us today is pulling the same kind of numbers it did in December 2005, when Yahoo acquired it. So what gives? Even though Web usage
usually slows in the summer, Del.icio.us was still far from penetrating the mainstream before the season started. It had a lot of room to grow--or so everyone thought. Being acquired by Yahoo was
supposed to help ramp up traffic. Could it be that mainstream users just don't find social bookmarking useful?
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