Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Yahoo! to Silence its Buzz Service

The Official Announcement

Yahoo has officially announces its decision to pull down the curtains over Yahoo! Buzz. Confirming the news, after a speculated pop-up last year in December, Yahoo! states the April 21st, 2011 to be its last day.

At last Yahoo Buzz has created some, er, buzz. If only because it is shutting down. Yahoo! on Monday told Buzz users that the site service will not be available after April 21.

"Yahoo! Buzz will be discontinued as of April 21, 2011. As of this date, you will be unable to access the Yahoo! Buzz site," a note posted on Yahoo! said. "This was a hard decision. However this will help us focus on our core strengths and new innovations."

Yahoo had launched Buzz in 2008, giving users a community platform where they could share news stories. It was supposed to be a competitor to website like Digg and Reddit. But for some strange reasons, never endeared itself to users.

Yahoo's decision to pull plug on Buzz was first reported in December last year when a confidential slide got leaked on twitter. The same slide claimed that Yahoo would also shut down Delicious, Yahoo Picks and Yahoo Bookmarks. Of these services, Buzz is the first one to close down officially. The slide claimed that shutting down of aforementioned services was necessary for the company to return to profit after 2011.

Launched in 2008, Buzz aimed at doing exactly what its title suggested. Yahoo! intended to make this a highly interactive platform wherein users would share news stories. Buzz was put down in the same space as that of Digg and Reddit, but, didn’t manage to gather much storm. In a brief address to the users of its Buzz service, Yahoo! states, “Yahoo! Buzz will be discontinued as of April 21, 2011. As of this date, you will be unable to access the Yahoo! Buzz site. This was a hard decision. However this will help us focus on our core strengths and new innovations.

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