Yahoo's del.icio.us Acquisition

Social bookmarking service del.icio.us announced on Friday that it had been acquired by Yahoo. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Joshua Schachter, creator of the site, said that the acquisition would allow it to work more closely with photo site Flickr, which was acquired by Yahoo in March.

Schachter created del.icio.us in 2003 as a way for himself and his friends to save and share Web pages that they visited. Earlier this year, del.icio.us, Inc. was formed to attract investment and help grow the service.

Since then, the site has received funding from a variety of companies and individuals, including Union Square Ventures, Amazon.com, BV Capital, Marc Andreessen, Esther Dyson, Seth Goldstein, Josh Koppelman, Howard Morgan, Tim O'Reilly, and Bob Young.

"I look forward to continuing my vision of social and community memory, and taking it to the next level with the del.icio.us community and Yahoo," Schachter said in a blog post announcing the acquisition Friday.

Yahoo Search's Jeremy Zawodny said the company has big plans for del.icio.us in the future. "Just like we've done with Flickr, we plan to give del.icio.us the resources, support, and room it needs to continue growing the service and community," he said.

Zawodny also hinted at some integration to come with Yahoo's My Web service and del.icio.us.

Michael Arrington of the TechCrunch Web log applauded Yahoo's move. "Yahoo, in addition to launching a flurry of new products in the last few months, now owns the two most important tagging properties on the web - flickr and del.icio.us," he wrote Friday.