Yahoo Devours Del.icio.us

In its latest acquisition of a social networking service, internet powerhouse Yahoo on Friday chomped down on del.icio.us, a startup that enables people to more easily compile and share their favorite content on the web.

The Sunnyvale, California-based company didn't disclose how much it paid for New York-based del.icio.us because the purchase price wasn't large enough to have a significant impact on its finances.

Del.icio.us will continue to run its own website, which allows users to create a personal account so they can create a page devoted to their favorite online articles, music and reviews. The material can be shared with others simply by sending along the web link. The content also can be identified with labels, or "tags," to make it simpler to find.

More than 300,000 users have signed up for the service since del.icio.us' inception two years ago, founder Joshua Schachter said in a Friday phone interview. Schachter intends to work at Yahoo's headquarters, but del.icio.us' other eight employees will be scattered around the country.

Yahoo! purchases Flickr

Yahoo! purchases Flickr

21 March 2005

Yahoo! has bought Canada's Ludicorp Research & Development, which runs the internet photo sharing service Flickr.

Flickr provides a way to store, sort, search and share photos online. Although no purchase price was disclosed, the deal is likely to have cost less than $50 million.

Joanna Stevens, a spokeswoman for Yahoo! told ZDnet: "We look forward to working with them for their innovation and product development across the Yahoo Network in the coming months."

Flickr will apparently remain a standalone site for now, but plans are afoot to relocate staff to California from Vancouver at some point. Experts predict it will be absorbed into Yahoo!'s new Yahoo! 360 blogging service.

Flickr promises that current management will remain in place and will not be turned into "a bunch of suits". The companies will continue separately, while Yahoo! will gain some of Flickr's features.

Internet giant Yahoo! has taken over the online photo-sharing site in a bid to expand its presence in the growing blog market.