YouTube Founders to Rekindle Yahoo Castoff

YouTube Founders to Rekindle Yahoo Castoff

Now, the names Steve Chen and Chad Hurley might not mean much to some, but these guys are responsible for YouTube which they sold to Google in 2006 for a whopping US$1.65 billion. With money in their pockets, they are now casting their gaze on a Yahoo castoff to be their next Web phenomenon.

Delicious is a social bookmarking service created in 2003. Essentially, it enables users to use a simple tagging system to save links from the Web. Yahoo snapped it up six years ago given its rising popularity, but unfortunately did little with it after their procurement of the online service.

In December 2010, leaked reports from Yahoo suggested that the company had plans to sell or close down Delicious. Having formed a new company called Avos recently, Chen and Hurley had been busy brainstorming on ideas for their next possible venture. One recurring issue which they grappled with was managing the constant influx of news and data from various Internet channels, such as Twitter and RSS feeds. 

"Twitter sees something like 200 million tweets a day, but I bet I can’t even read 1,000 a day," said Chen. "There’s a waterfall of content that you’re missing out on."

The lads placed a call to Jerry Yang, one of Yahoo's founders, and made him an offer when they caught wind of Yahoo's plans to shut down Delicious. Financial details remain undisclosed. According to the New York Times report, Chen and Hurley states the the revamped Delicious will resemble the original site, with a probable launch date happening later this year. While the site may retain most of its original looks, the YouTube founders, however, are planning to overhaul the site's software and systems used to tag and organize links.

Source: New York Times