Raw Sugar Closes - Part of Web 2.0’s Roadkill

Announcement: Social bookmarking company Raw Sugar closes its doors.

The last day in December was a sad day in the Web 2.0 world. Ofer Ben-Shachar’s ambitious project - Raw Sugar - closed down its operation.

If you never had the opportunity to try it (it still is in operation as of this posting), Raw Sugar attempted to be a much more potent form of del.icio.us by not only providing the ability to bookmark and share sites, but to also categorize those bookmarks in a way no other service has been able to achieve.

I was first connected with Ofer earlier last year and was impressed with his direction and vision. He was hoping I might be able to contribute to the success of the project but I had reservation of the place it had in a world which already saw too many social bookmarking services on the scene. While the idea of what Raw Sugar could do was exciting, it never really quite hit the tipping point which would pull it into the lead and be the preference of those who understood what tagging and social bookmarking even was.

The loss of Raw Sugar isn’t just a soon forgotten footnote in the explosion of Web 2.0, it’s a warning sign to other Web 2.0 companies that “new” and “innovative” does not always translate into big fat checks which YouTube, MySpace and Digg have received. It means people really do have to join in and be excited by what the product is, just as much as it is for the developer to produce it.

Are you listening del.ico.us and other Web 2.0 hopefuls? Beware!

2007 certainly will be an interesting year.