Sunnyvale, California — In news that should surprise no one–Finally, Yahoo on Monday informed Buzz users that the the company will shut down its ill-fated story-sharing service Buzz on Thursday, April 21.
Yahoo announced the move on its Yahoo Buzz site Monday. “Yahoo Buzz will be discontinued as of April 21, 2011. As of this date, you will be unable to access the Yahoo Buzz site, Yahoo said in a statement. “This was a hard decision. However this will help us focus on our core strengths and new innovations.”
Here is the official statement:
Originally touted as a competitor to websites like Digg and Reddit. But for some strange reasons, never endeared itself to users. Yahoo unveiled Buzz in 2008, the service empowered users to “see and share updates such as when they have uploaded photos, changed their status, buzzed up a news story or posted a new restaurant review, all from Yahoo,” the company said at the time.
The reason: The audience seems to prefer social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and one more — maybe Digg or Reddit. Over time, Digg lost its influence and even Google failed to get much response with a similar platform called Google Buzz.
“I think in any market, there is always room for three — one dominant, second-based and the third is a niche type of player,” says Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst with the Altimeter Group. Owyang adds that Google’s inability to crack the market is a function of the company’s size. “Google has gotten so big, it is hard for them to be as nimble. Yahoo is the direction Google is heading if they cannot become nimble again.”
Surprisingly, Yahoo’s decision to shut down 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. This follows the shutting down of Yahoo! Video which was announced in December and completely shut down last month.
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. Besides, MyLogBlog was announced in February this year and is to be completely shut down next month. There are rumors of Yahoo trying to sell Delicious as things continue to be consolidated by Yahoo in an effort to figure out what their portal is going to be offering as part of ongoing efforts to remain profitable.
The discontinuation of Buzz follows others which have been chopped down as part of the efforts by CEO Carol Bartz to turn the company around. With the likes of Facebook and Google taking much of the traffic away from their sites by offering better services, Yahoo is left in a very tough fight for survival. With the site scheduled to be shut down April 21st, they are not waiting to remove this one from the fold. The usual layoffs will accompany this closure.
Nevertheless, all of this will go on until Yahoo finds the right solution and is able get the correct mix of product offerings to increase traffic to the site.