YouTube founders buy social bookmarking site

Posted by Fry Lawrence On Thursday, May 5th 2011 in Business

Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, the founders of popular video-sharing website YouTube, have acquired the Delicious social bookmarking service. Yahoo announced on Wednesday that they had sold the once popular social bookmarking website to the former YouTube owners, as it didn't fit anymore with the company's new strategy. Delicious is a site that allows users to bookmark and tag their favourite links, as well as share them with other users and discover new content.

The service was started by Joshua Schachter in 2003. Yahoo bought the social bookmarking website in 2005, but in 2010 the Internet company announced intentions to sell the service or shut it down if they couldn't find a buyer. The YouTube founders have recently acquired the website, which they plan to re-vitalise as part of their latest business endeavour. Delicious will become a division of the duo's brand new company Avos. The amount paid by Hurley and Chen for Delicious hasn't been made public, but it's believed to be a great deal less than the $30 million Yahoo originally paid for the bookmarking site in 2005. Steve Chen and Chad Hurley are well known in the business and tech world for being the founders and former owners of YouTube. In 2006, Hurley and Chen sold the video service to Google for an impressive $1.76 billion. They both left the company during the following years: Chen in 2008 and Hurley, the former YouTube CEO, in 2010.

The pair haven't yet revealed much information about their new business project Avos. According to them, the new company is going to help Internet users to cope with the large amount of information hitting the web every single day. Chad Hurley said in a press release that they saw an opportunity to help users save and share Internet content more easily. The bookmarking service will remain as it is until July 2011. At present, Yahoo is asking Delicious users for permission to transfer their accounts to Avos. Following a major restructuring that had taken place last year in December, Yahoo decided to get rid of some of its acquired brands, including Altavista and Yahoo Buzz, two services that were shut down recently. Delicious could have been the next to go if Hurley and Chen hadn't decided to buy the bookmarking service and re-vamp it. The pair said they intend to make Delicious "easier and more fun".