Yahoo tries to make Delicious bookmarking site more mainstream

Yahoo's social bookmarking site Delicious (formerly del.icio.us) has received its long-awaited user interface overhaul, which the company hopes will attract more mainstream users and make the site less niche.

Since acquiring del.icio.us in late 2005, Yahoo has gradually moved the service into a more accessible realm. It has also been moved from its clever, but easy to mis-type .us domain to the much simpler Delicious.com.

The site's layout has been changed to improve uptake in new users, while maintaining essential elements for existing users. Yahoo has also announced increased overall speed through a "new infrastructure that makes ever page faster," and the search engine has also been refined to quicken searches.

The redesigned interface change breaks Delicious into navigation tabs: Home, Bookmarks, People, and Tags.

Unfortunately, the debut of the redesigned site lacks a certain degree of "punch" for several reasons. First, there has been an invitation-only preview site in place since last year, and detailed synopses of the redesign have existed for just as long. Also, Delicious' founder Joshua Schachter resigned from his post at Yahoo only a matter of weeks before this launch after it had been repeatedly delayed.