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This article was published on July 2, 2014

Yahoo putting People Search, Yahoo Voices, Xobni and other products out to pasture to further its focus


Yahoo putting People Search, Yahoo Voices, Xobni and other products out to pasture to further its focus

It’s summer time in Silicon Valley. Time to throw out all the stuff no one uses anymore. That’s what Yahoo is doing. Today the company announced it was shutting down some less-used services.

In a Tumblr post, SVP of the Cloud Platform Group, Jay Rossiter announced the company’s progress on focusing on its core mission: “making the world’s daily habits more inspiring and entertaining.” Part of that mission involves sunsetting products to focus on its core. Here’s what’s on Yahoo’s chopping block today:

People Search: As a user, you want one place to find everything you need. You can use Yahoo Search to find people, blogs, places, maps – anything. That’s why today, July 2, we are closing down Yahoo People Search, a defunct directory site that’s no longer useful.

Xobni: As we announced in July 2013, although we are shutting down Xobni.com and the Smartr Product Suite today, July 2, we have incorporated many Xobni-like features into Yahoo Mail (like compose auto-suggest and people-centric mail search) and the technology behind the product continues to inform our current and future user experiences.

Yahoo Toolbar on Chrome: By July 22, the Yahoo Toolbar will be removed from the Chrome web store, to comply with recent Google Chrome policy updates. Instead, we now offer the Yahoo Extension for Chrome, which will give you quick access to Yahoo.com whenever you open a new tab.

Yahoo Shine: We recently unveiled several new digital magazines that dive deeper into the topics our users have come to love on Yahoo Shine and offer unique advertising opportunities for brands. While Yahoo Shine will be closing on July 31, through our digital magazines, like Yahoo Beauty and Yahoo Travel, we will continue to bring these topics to life with stunning visuals, a strong editorial voice and engaging native advertising.

Yahoo Voices and the Yahoo Contributor Network: On July 31, Voices.Yahoo.com will be shut down and at the end of August, Contributor.Yahoo.com closes.

The post also highlights the company’s progress shutting down other services like Bookmarks.Yahoo.com, Research Reports, and Newlook Service.

Yahoo has been struggling to regain its former glory as the go-to portal for all things on the Web. To achieve that the company is focusing on its Search, Communications, Digital Magazines and Video. To help it gain a foothold in video, yesterday it announced it was producing a sixth season of the recently cancelled TV show Community. It’s a play out of the Netflix book of original content and one that gives Yahoo more clout in the video world.

➤ Furthering Our Focus [Yahoo]

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