Delicious is about to lose a bunch of users

For months now Delicious has promised to launch their new website with some updated features, a brand new design and improved security. Another big change will be the new domain name. Although it has been active for a while now the main domain was still http://del.icio.us once they will switch to the new design the official domain name will be http://delicious.com.

Interestingly enough the switch will not go unnoticed by most users. As Delicious writes on its blog:

After months of work, the new Delicious is almost ready to come out of the oven. When we release it, you’ll be automatically logged out of your account and will have to log in again, due to some changes we’re making behind the scenes.

They have some helpful instructions for people who are currently logged in but might not know what their password is and for people who might not remember which emailaddress they used to register for Delicious. If you have an account there and plan to use it after the switch I recommend reading that blogpost now and following the instructions to make sure you can still login later.

My guess is that a large part of its users won’t return after the switch and will turn out to be ‘sleeping’ users. But since Delicious doesn’t openly disclose its traffic and numbers we won’t ever know what the real effect will be of their update.