Yahoo is Shutting Down Del.icio.us

Dec 17, 2010 by Matt | Posted in Social Media 5 Comments

According to TechCrunch, Yahoo has fired the entire staff of the Delicious social bookmarking service and will be shutting it down shortly. (Along with Altavista and MyBlogLog.) They will also be closing Yahoo Buzz and some of their API services.

Yahoo acquired Del.icio.us back in 2005, and has done little with it. They haven’t run ads on the site or really made any apparent effort to monetize the service. And instead of, I don’t know, selling the service to someone who could make it profitable, they decide to just shut it all down. (Let’s not forget that a meticulously-tagged index of links and their popularity is a wonderful mine of data that advertisers and publishers would love to be able to get metrics from.)

Suffice to say, I am majorly unhappy about this. I have been a Del.icio.us user for years, and have over 2,500 tagged bookmarks stored in the service. Yahoo is suddenly yanking the rug out from under users who have been depending on the service for years. We would gladly put up with ads, or maybe even premium plans. But no, Yahoo is just saying “screw you” to everyone.

Yahoo is dead to me. One by one they are closing the few services that are worth anything. (I assume Flickr and the wonderful BOSS Search API can’t be too far behind?) The services that they are keeping around are things like their vapid content offerings and underwhelming webmail application. They are still stuck in the ’90s, and they are blatantly disregarding the assets that are their most valuable.

Anyway, be sure to export your Delicious bookmarks as soon as possible so you don’t lose them when the site closes. Find an alternative service or simply import them into your web browser’s bookmarking tool.

Update: Yahoo has announced that they will not be shutting Delicious down after all.

  • http://www.problogdesign.com/ Michael Martin

    Agreed. I think this has come as a real shock to everyone. I’d have thought Delicious was one of their most useful properties. Definitely one of their best loved ones!

    It’s just downright pathetic that they aren’t even going to try to make it profitable. I hope it’s a warning for future founders against selling out to Yahoo… :(

    • http://www.webmaster-source.com Matt

      Pathetic is right. It’s no wonder the company is in such bad shape. This isn’t going to help them at all, though.

      “Hey everybody, let’s just throw away all of our assets. If we can’t figure out what to do with them, nobody else can have them!”

  • http://thatgrrl.ca Laura

    I’ve used Delicious for years too. Really felt it was one of the sites I could trust to be there. Seeing this post on 9Rules I had to come and make sure it wasn’t a sarcastic post or a trick of some kind. I actually feel sad. I hope they would not do the same for Flickr. I am a paying user there and have been for at least three years. There isn’t another place I would move my photos to, or run the groups for photographers in each genre/ location. If they closed Flickr I would have no reason to use Yahoo at all, for anything.

    • http://www.webmaster-source.com Matt

      No joke, sadly. (That would be a sick joke…)

      I certainly hope Flickr isn’t next. As far as I know the Flickr staff are not in the current round of layoffs, but it sets a bad precedent. I don’t use the site often, but it’s a great service.

  • http://www.kvinnasokerman.se/ Bra Kreditkort

    This is truly saddening.We’re still attached to Yahoo because of Delicious and some other cool stuff. Thanks for the update, need to export bookmarks ASAP.