Yahoo! buys del.icio.us

Om Malik, Friday, December 9, 2005 at 11:50 AM PT Comments (29)

Yahoo continues with its Web 2.0 makeover. The company snapped up the bookmarking service del.icio.us today, according to a post by founder Joshua Schachter on his website. “We look forward to bringing you new features and more servers in the future,” he writes. (Scale matters!) Jeremy gives Yahoo’s take!

Niall Kennedy has more details. No mention of what they paid for it, but what will be the ultimate pay-off, its hard to say. It also is an acknowledgement that the whole My Web 2.0 thing wasn’t going to well?

You can read what Union Square Ventures, one of the investors in the deal, think about the deal. It has to be a good exit for them. No one clearly knows what was going to be the business model for del.icio.us, and how it could get past early adopter market.

Jeff Clavier writes, “I mentioned social bookmarking as one of the areas I saw a “bubblet” on the rise in my panel on “Investing 2.0” in Paris, with 10+ (if not 20+) companies developing very similar functionality to delicious - which had the first mover advantage but a reasonably limited barrier to entry.”

Eric Goldstein, co-founder of Clipmarks writes, “…what i’m more disappointed in is how celebrated the announcement is within the “web 2.0″ community. I guess it kind of saddens me that the annointed leader of the web 2.0 movement has sold out this early in its life. sure, they made some good money and that’s cool…can’t blame them. but doesn’t this kind of serve as a reality check to new companies that even the leaders are just in it to flip it?”

Of course, there is that whole Digg phenomenon, and emergence of newer competitors such as TailRank. What could be the price of this deal? The company had raised $1.3 million, and if that got the VCs around 25% of the company, my guess is the final price is between - $10 and $15 million. I am speculating here, and have no information. So treat it like that… simple speculation.

29 comments so far

December 9th, 2005
12:31 PM PT
brian said:

Kudos to USV and the del.icio.us team for proving that business models don’t matter in the Web 2.0 economy when companies like Yahoo will snap them up just on the basis on being the new cool thing.

I don’t think del.icio.us ever generated one dime in revenues during its entire existence (aside from slapping some AdSense placements if that).

December 9th, 2005
12:45 PM PT

Hey, i’m the co-founder of Clipmarks and wanted to express my gut reaction to this announcement. My reaction might change, as gut reactions often do, but i figured i’d post it here (also posted it on the clipmarks site).

i’m kind of indifferent to the deal. it is what it is. what i’m more disappointed in is how celebrated the announcement is within the “web 2.0″ community. I guess it kind of saddens me that the annointed leader of the web 2.0 movement has sold out this early in its life. sure, they made some good money and that’s cool…can’t blame them. but doesn’t this kind of serve as a reality check to new companies that even the leaders are just in it to flip it? i can’t predict what the fate of Clipmarks will be (good, bad or otherwise), but i guess it just disappoints me that delicious didn’t hang in there and try to fight. am i alone in this?

December 9th, 2005
12:52 PM PT

Social Media Consolidation Act 8: Yahoo takes del.icio.us out

First, I apologize for my complete silence over the past week or so, but I have been completely swamped by a number of things - that I can’t talk about yet, and I have just returned from Paris where I spoke at the excellent Les Blogs 2.0 organized by…

December 9th, 2005
12:59 PM PT
brian said:

I think your readers should read the excellence article written by Jim Collins, author of “Built to Last,” in the March 2000 issue of Fast Company, “Built to Flip.” (http://www.fastcompany.com/online/32/builttoflip.html)

December 9th, 2005
1:00 PM PT

MyWeb.icio.us? Yahoo acquires del.icio.us

Busy week for Yahoo. News that they were going to add VoIP to messenger, then Yahoo Answers, and now the announcement that Yahoo has bought tagging sensation del.icio.us: And just like we’ve done with Flickr, we plan to give del.icio.us the re…

December 9th, 2005
1:22 PM PT

[...] This should complement Flickr nicely but really, I’m skeptical what this means for MyWeb. Guess we’ll have to just wait and see. Haven’t seen any details of the finances disclosed, though Om Malik speculates it could be between $10 to $15 million, while BusinessWeek’s Heather Green says she talked To Joshua Schachter and “there isn’t going to be a press release, which is typical of smaller deals.” While Greg Yardley hints at $30-$40 million (linked earlier). [...]

December 9th, 2005
2:42 PM PT

del.icio.us: How Much Did the Employees Get?

I will preface this by saying I know NOTHING about the actual deal between Yahoo and del.icio.us.  Om Malik’s posting, in which he speculated about the buyout price, set me thinking about the various scenarios for employees in this buyout.&…

December 9th, 2005
2:43 PM PT

[...] The startup appetite over at Yahoo is not declining. The giant just followed recent purchase of Flickr, Upcoming, Oddpost and others with the buyout of del.icio.us. [...]

December 9th, 2005
2:47 PM PT
Markus said:

Congrats… I doubt they could have ever made money on their own and this is a good way to cash out.

Chances are yahoo is going up and buying everything 2.0 related so that other companies can’t get ahold of it.

I believe that what we define as web2.0 at its core threatens yahoo’s very existance. If they don’t crush or own the space they will lose billions in a couple of years down the road.

December 9th, 2005
2:54 PM PT

[...] Om has some input on the subject and here is the post from Joshua the founder of Del.icio.us. [...]

December 9th, 2005
2:57 PM PT

[...] Found some more details here: The deal seems to be somewhere between $10 and $40 million ($10-$15 according to the blog entry, $30-$40 according to a comment). [...]

December 9th, 2005
3:41 PM PT
Ed Kohler said:

A business model based around user contributed content and AdSense ads isn’t entirely ridiculous. The cost of creating content is virtually zero, so how much money do you really need to make on the ads to be in the black?

December 9th, 2005
4:00 PM PT

[...] According to fellow 9ruler Om Malik Yahoo has gobbled up something ridiculously del.icio.us [...]

December 9th, 2005
5:10 PM PT
dano said:

10-15 would be my guess too. What is Google’s M&A team on holiday early this year?

December 9th, 2005
5:43 PM PT

[...] Source: Om Malik’s Blog. [...]

December 9th, 2005
6:37 PM PT

Yahoo Eats and It’s Del.icio.us

This counts for big news around these parts. Jeremy Zawodny’s blog points directly to this announcement from the del.icio.us blog: We’re proud to announce that del.icio.us has joined the Yahoo! family. Together we’ll continue to improve how people d…

December 10th, 2005
4:21 AM PT

del.icio.us bought by Yahoo!

Joshua Schachter announced late yesterday that his famous social bookmarking service named del.icio.us has been acquired by Yahoo!. All I can say is congratolations to Joshua aswell as Yahoo!

del.icio.us announcement: http://blog.del.icio.us/blo...

December 10th, 2005
5:36 AM PT

[...] I will preface this by saying I know NOTHING about the actual deal between Yahoo and del.icio.us.  Om Malik’s posting, in which he speculated about the buyout price, set me thinking about the various scenarios for employees in this buyout.  You may recall a couple of weeks ago I wrote about participating vs preferred shares, and how they could impact employee stockholders and founders at exit, especially in the case of a small exit.  If the numbers are as Om speculates, then this seemed like a perfect opportunity to illustrate that impact. [...]

December 11th, 2005
7:07 PM PT

[...] Yahoo! buys del.icio.us. Om Malik has more scoop on it. [...]

December 11th, 2005
7:34 PM PT

[...] You will find more info on this acquisition from Om Malik and del.icio.us themselves. [...]

December 13th, 2005
12:06 AM PT

[...] I wonder if Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft are working on something along these lines? There are many speculative rationalizations of why Yahoo bought del.ico.us, but one that I haven’t heard of is may be they have seen the value in a service that attracts a free pool of resources that are willing to categorize the content on the web. I think del.ico.us would make an excellent teaching tool. [...]

December 13th, 2005
2:13 AM PT
intradink said:

del.icio.us RIP

This is probably the worst news I’ve heard in ages. I’m a long time user of del.icio.us and love it’s simple interface, open standards, ad free, and extensability. Joshua, please provide some more information on how del.icio.us will mutate…

December 13th, 2005
5:33 AM PT
ECTIO said:

del.icio.us has joined the Yahoo! family

via del.icio.us blog
We’re proud to announce that del.icio.us has joined the Yahoo! family. Together we’ll continue to improve how people discover, remember and share on the Internet, with a big emphasis on the power of community. We’re excited to…

December 13th, 2005
6:17 PM PT

[...] Om Malik followed up with some guesses at the sale price (among other things): [in an earlier round of financing] the company had raised $1.3 million, and if that got the VCs around 25% of the company, my guess is the final price is between - $10 and $15 million. I am speculating here, and have no information. So treat it like that… simple speculation. [...]

December 17th, 2005
10:40 PM PT
RAA said:

Yahoo has been known to pay millions for businesses that didn’t go anywhere. I don’t think it’s all about profits for yahoo, as it is nipping the competitor in the bud.

December 22nd, 2005
8:31 AM PT

[...] There has been a lot of back and forth about whether the del.icio.us - Yahoo deal makes sense. In my opinion, it does. Yahoo’s tagging strategy was incomplete without it, and not just becase My Web 2.0 has not been that big a success - so far. [...]

December 22nd, 2005
11:04 PM PT

[...] Yahoo’s MyWeb effort, so eloquently detailed by Erick Schonfeld in Business 2.0, and its recent acquisition of Del.icio.us are part of this “people versus Google” movement. [...]

July 10th, 2006
10:14 AM PT
rpl said:

now you don’t have to sign to del.icio.us to have a personal online bookmark,
what you only need is a pop3 account and bookmarkMail.
to add a bookmark you can send yourself an email with URL as a subject,
and you can fill the email body with the description.
and to see the result you can see it with bookmarkMail here,
and if you want to set up for your own server click here

some screenshot
1. send yourself an email

2. see your sent email in outlook(mail client)

3. login to bookmarkMail

4. see the bookmark

March 26th, 2007
10:54 AM PT

[...] es el servicio de almacenamiento de bookmarks número 1, fue comprada por yahoo en 2005 y cuenta con más de 1 millón de [...]

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