Delicious Won’t Be Closed, Just Sold To The Highest Bidder

Fans of social bookmarking site Delicious can breathe a sigh of relief today with news that owner Yahoo intends to sell the site rather than shut it down.

News of the impending decline of Delicious broke last week after Yahoo included the site on a slide of services it intended to “sunset” without any formal explanation of what that meant. There were also unconfirmed rumors that the Delicious team had been let go as part of Yahoo’s latest round of 600 job cuts.

The (we presuming remaining) team at Delicious wrote on the Delicious blog that

“No, we are not shutting down Delicious. While we have determined that there is not a strategic fit at Yahoo!, we believe there is a ideal home for Delicious outside of the company where it can be resourced to the level where it can be competitive….

– We’re actively thinking about the future of Delicious and we believe there is a home outside the company that would make more sense for the service and our users. We’re in the process of exploring a variety of options and talking to companies right now. And we’ll share our plans with you as soon as we can.”

The damage may be done though with many users already fleeing the service on last weeks news.

Potential buyers include Jason Calacanis’ Mahalo.