Is Yahoo Shutting Down Del.icio.us? [Update: Del.icio.us Responds]

For a couple of days now, we’ve been hearing rumors that the Yahoo layoffs included the entire Delicious team.  Now Former Yahoo employee and Upcoming founder Andy Baio has tweeted out the above Yahoo! product team meeting slide that seems to show that Yahoo! is either closing or merging the social bookmarking service as well as Upcoming, Fire Eagle, MyBlogLog and others.

In some kind of weird founder solidarity, the slide was originally posted on Twitter by MyBlogLog founder Eric Marcoullier.

Listed under the ominous “Sunset” are: Delicious, Altavista, MyBlogLog, Yahoo! Bookmarks, Yahoo! Picks

Under “Merge” are: Upcoming, FoxyTunes, Sideline, FireEagle, Yahoo Events and Yahoo People Search.

It also looks like sundry Yahoo properties like Yahoo Deals and Yahoo Calendar will be made into features.

Delicious, MyBlogLog and Upcoming have been somewhat neglected since being acquired by Yahoo and founders Joshua Schachter, Marcoullier and Baio have all moved on to do other (more successful) things. Perhaps one tell tale sign of Delicious’ demise? The support forums are now riddled with spam and team sign-off missives like the one below.

I have emailed Yahoo for more information and verification and will update this post when I hear back.

Update: AllThingsD’s Liz Gannes is reporting that the Yahoo products will be in fact shut down and that the slide does in fact originate from an all hands meeting at Yahoo, following yesterday’s layoffs.Yahoo Product Manager Blake Irving has threatened to fire whomever leaked the slide.

The official response from Yahoo:

“Part of our organizational streamlining involves cutting our investment in underperforming or off-strategy products to put better focus on our core strengths and fund new innovation in the next year and beyond.

We continuously evaluate and prioritize our portfolio of products and services, and do plan to shut down some products in the coming months such as Yahoo! Buzz, our Traffic APIs, and others. We will communicate specific plans when appropriate.”

For the few of you unaware this is PR speak for, “We confirm.”

Update 2: Delicious just posted the following “What’s Next For Delicious” on its blog:

“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.”

It seems as though Yahoo has made up its mind this morning that it will sell the property, not close it.