Dec. 17, 2:59 p.m. | Updated Adding at the end that on Friday, Yahoo said it was not closing Delicious.
As part of its effort to streamline its beleaguered Web business, Yahoo may shut down several well-known Web products, including Delicious, a social bookmarking tool, and Upcoming, a social calendar.
The news surfaced online Thursday through what appears to be a leaked snapshot of a Yahoo presentation that shows several Yahoo services the company is apparently thinking about shuttering or merging with other services. The picture was first posted online by Eric Marcoullier, co-founder of MyBlogLog, a social network for bloggers that was acquired by Yahoo in 2007. Mr. Marcoullier no longer works at Yahoo and said on Twitter that he had found the slide on the Web.
In addition to Delicious and Upcoming, the slide appears to show plans to merge or shrink several other standalone products, including Yahoo Buzz, a news aggregator, and AltaVista, a search tool.
Dana Lengkeek, a Yahoo spokeswoman, said in an e-mail: “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.”
To many in Web land, the news is likely to cause dismay. Although Yahoo failed to capitalize on the social networking niche now dominated by Facebook and Twitter, many of the company’s tools, including Delicious, which it acquired from its creator Joshua Schachter in 2005, were among the first wave of services aimed at the social Web and reinventing how people shared content online.
Yahoo said Monday that it was looking to lay off 650 employees, roughly 5 percent of its work force, as a way to trim costs amid sluggish growth. The cuts are expected to come largely from Yahoo’s products division, which oversees services like Delicious and Yahoo Buzz.
Update: Yahoo said in a blog post on Friday that it was not shutting down Delicious: “While we have determined that there is not a strategic fit at Yahoo, we believe there is a ideal home for Delicious outside of the company where it can be resourced to the level where it can be competitive.”