Yahoo Says Delicious for Sale, Blames Press for Confusion

Friday, 17 December 2010 23:43

Yahoo Says Delicious for Sale, Blames Press for Confusion

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Despite the fact that a leaked presentation slide from Yahoo clearly shows social-media pioneer Delicious in the “sunset” column — which is a euphemism for “closure” — the purple portal now says that it intends to

sell the site, not close it.

“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,” the company said in a blog post.

In other words, the company apparently does care enough about Delicious to invest in it at “the level where it can be competitive.”

Yahoo blamed the press for the confusion.

“We can only imagine how upsetting the news coverage over the past 24 hours has been to many of you,” the company added. “Speaking for our team, we were very disappointed by the way that this appeared in the press.”

Of course, in the 24 hours since the leaked slide appeared — you know, the one that listed Delicious as destined for a “sunset” — there has been such an uproar that Yahoo may very well be backtracking.

Either way, this whole situation has been a debacle, and Yahoo is not going to make it any better by, um, correcting the record 24 hours after the tech press reported what their lying eyes could plainly see.

By shooting the messengers Yahoo has not only extended a story their communications department should have buried into yet a second cycle, but the media taunts have inspired brand new negative publicity of a company the tech press has been pretty down on since it fumbled that Hail Mary pass from Microsoft.

Like this shot from Techcrunch’s Michael Arrington:

“They’re just a nightmarish Dilbert-cartoon version of the old Yahoo, where employees fear for their jobs and stumble around the office trying to protect themselves, not build anything new and ambitious,” he wrote. “There is only one way a company recovers from this. They must have new leadership. And soon.”

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