We’ve received a solid report from a reliable and proven source that Yahoo has sold social bookmarking site Delicious for $5m+.
The service was placed on the market in December after a meeting to discuss Yahoo’s future direction. After a heated bidding process, the site has reportedly been sold to a rival bookmarking service – who exactly we’re unsure of but we’ll update once we have confirmation. We do know its been sold to an existing competitor with “strong user base.”
If the $5 million figure is true, it’s more than many believed the site to be worth but a hefty loss on Yahoo’s rumoured $18m purchase price in 2005 from founder Joshua Schachter.
We’ve contacted Yahoo and current Delicious developers for confirmation and will update once we’ve heard back. In the mean time, while we dig further, check out these Delicious alternatives.
Update: We’ve gotten a reply from Yahoo which, sadly, is not much of a reply.
Hello-
We don’t comment on rumor or speculation.
As we have said in the past, we are actively thinking about the future of Delicious and believe there is a home outside the company that would make more sense for the service, our users and our shareholders.
There is, of course, the adage that a non-denial is as good as a confirmation but that’s not a jump that we’re willing to take, just yet.
![startuprally2 Unconfirmed reports that Yahoo has sold Delicious for $5 Million+ [Updated]](http://thenextweb.com/images/startuprally2.png "startuprally2 photo")
This has to be better than “sunsetting” the service..
@carlmorris agreed but i have a feeling that the competiting service might be inclined to shut it down.
@carlmorris agreed but i have a feeling that the competing service might be inclined to shut it down.
@Zee well there could be a major advantage for them in migrating all the data. I’m less attached to Delicious the brand than I am to my bookmarks and tags, my friends on there and the bookmarks dataset as a whole. I would probably move to the service provided by the buyer if it kept everything – and maybe added useful features.
@carlmorris To be fair, this is what “sunsetting” means. The Y! execs said early on that “sunsetting” doesn’t neccesarily mean shut down.
Must be nice to have train loads of surplus cash just lying around.
http://www.anonymous-web.at.tc
Given acquistions seldom bode well for users, lets hope this one’s different.
Say, if that competing service were pinboard, and they offered a free transition, I’d be quite thrilled.
I became frustrated with Delicious a long time ago.
So I created http://www.rinnku.com (kinda like Digg + Delicious).
I have to agree that even $5mil is considerably WAY more than I thought it would even go for. The site, looks as if its ready to croak.
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Whatever. Switched to Pinboard (http://pinboard.in/) and couldn’t be happier. Delicious started sucking as soon as yahoo bought it.
Don’t think many noticed this, but I like that in the image you used the Delicious typeface in the background. Neat
Finally Delcious has been bought by founders of YouTube – Chad Hurely and Steven Chen! I migrated my delicious account a few minutes back where my account divorced Yahoo. Thanks Chad and Steven.