Is Yahoo about to kill Delicious?

Updated

It looks like Yahoo’s cost-cutting efforts go beyond its recent layoffs. The company plans to “sunset” (i.e., shut down) a number of products including social bookmarking service Delicious, according to what looks like a leaked slide from a company-wide presentation.

The slide was posted on Twitter by Eric Marcoullier, who co-founded blog social network MyBlogLog, another service listed in the “sunset” column. The slide says that Yahoo Picks, AltaVista, Yahoo Buzz, and other services are also targeted for shutdown.

The decision isn’t a huge surprise, since Yahoo hasn’t really included Delicious when talking about how the company has revamped its products and infrastructure, and traffic to the site seems to be petering off. Yahoo acquired the then-hot startup in 2005.

Delicious founder Joshua Schachter has already moved on from Yahoo, going to Google and then founding a stealthy social startup. Marcoullier has moved on too, co-founding OneTrueFan, a service that connects publishers with their most loyal fans.

I’ve emailed Yahoo for confirmation and will update if I hear back.

Update: AllThingsDigital’s Liz Gannes spotted a tweet from Yahoo’s chief product officer Blake Irving, that basically confirms the slide is real and implies that whoever leaked it will be fired. He says to Marcoullier: “Really dude? Can’t wait to find out how you got the web cast. Whoever it is, gone!”

And here’s Yahoo’s statement:

Part of our organizational streamlining involves cutting our investment in underperforming or off-strategy products to put better focus on our core strengths and fund new innovation in the next year and beyond. We continuously evaluate and prioritize our portfolio of products and services, and do plan to shut down some products in the coming months such as Yahoo! Buzz, our Traffic APIs, and others. We will communicate specific plans when appropriate.

yahoo slide

[top image via Flickr/Duncan Harris]

Topics:

,
  • csun

    I personally find it very unprofessional for an employee to leak information like this.It's fun for news readers, but obviously it's confidential to Yahoo.And it should have stayed confidential.I'm sure the MyBlogLog founder is disappointed, but he shouldn't have leaked this info.

  • http://lgmassmedia.com Briana Ford

    Wow, leaks like this are serious. I hope they give us a date before they shut down Delicious; I have about 600+ bookmarks saved. Looks like I need to start importing

  • http://www.marcoullier.com/blog bpm140

    I have nothing but good thoughts for my friends at Yahoo. It's sad to see the company closing down MyBlogLog, and I feel bad for all the customers and users. I still believe in the vision of MyBlogLog – that's why we started OneTrueFan. I'm sorry to see Yahoo give up on that vision, but understand the realities of their corporate situation. I hope the customers and employees are all going to be okay in the end. Here at OTF we will do what we can to help give customers of MBL the features and functionality they need and love. I wish I had more information on what is going on within Yahoo and what is behind this set of decisions, but obviously I know nothing more than any other former Yahoo employee.

  • http://6pna.com PanosJee

    The last two months I am using http://historio.us I never looked back to Delicious

  • http://mindspew.net/?p=3288 Is Yahoo Shutting Down Del.icio.us? | Mind Spew

    [...] some kind of weird founder solidarity, the slide was originally posted on Twitter by MyBlogLog founder Eric [...]

  • http://blog.thelettertwo.com/2011/10/03/delicious-revamps-social-bookmarking-but-it-all-stacks-up-to-confusion-summations/ Delicious Revamps Social Bookmarking, But It All Stacks Up To Confusion & Summations | The Digital Letter – Official Blog of Kenneth Yeung + TheLetterTwo.com

    [...] would become of the service. Then in 2010, the answer came: Yahoo, in their infinite wisdom, was going to “sunset” the service, meaning that it would be shut down. The community went up in arms over this decision and protested [...]

blog comments powered by Disqus