The furore over Yahoo’s decision to ban work from home is not yet over but CEO Marissa Meyer is already ruffling some feathers by killing off over half a dozen apps including the Yahoo! app for Blackberry as a part of the ‘spring-cleaning’ process. Ouch! Marissa Meyer earlier said in one of her interviews that “Yahoo needs to cut down the number of apps from 60 to 12 to better focus on its users needs and “daily habits” of checking sports, news, stocks, and email” and looks like she is right on track. Over the past few years Yahoo has had trouble making out if it was a technology company or a media company, but Marissa has made it clear that Yahoo will be once again be known as a technology company.
The most high profile app that will be axed is the Blackberry app. While the app will no longer be available for download from April 1st, it will continue to work for users who have already installed it. Some of the apps sound familiar but some like the Yahoo! Clues or Yahoo! Avatars don’t ring a bell at all. It makes a lot of sense to drop support for the apps that are rarely used and don’t bring in any revenue for the company and instead focus on providing a better experience for the Yahoo! services that are more widely used.
When companies grow, they try to get into every business and end up in a messy situation like Yahoo currently is. So it is now time to trim the fat and get going.
Here is the complete list of products that will be axed soon:
Yahoo! Avatars Effective April 1, 2013, we will no longer support Yahoo! Avatars across our properties. If you like your existing avatar and want to keep it, please go to the Avatars download page, pick a picture size and format, and click the appropriate download button. Similarly, if you want to edit your avatar, you can download the image and then use a photo editing service of your preference. If you want to continue using your avatar with our products, go to Yahoo! Profile and upload the avatar you downloaded. For more details, please click here. Additionally effective April 1, we will no longer support the Avatars YQL table.
Yahoo! app for BlackBerry Effective April 1, 2013, the Yahoo! app for BlackBerry will no longer be available for download. For those of you who have already downloaded the app, you can continue to use it but it will no longer be actively supported.
Yahoo! Clues (beta) Effective April 1, 2013, Yahoo! Clues (beta) will shut down.
Yahoo! App Search Effective April 1, 2013, Yahoo! App Search will shut down.
Yahoo! Sports IQ Effective April 1, 2013, Yahoo! Sports IQ will shut down. Your final lifetime Sports IQ score and rank will be automatically transferred to and preserved within your Yahoo! Fantasy Profile.
Yahoo! Message Boards website Effective April 1, 2013, the Yahoo! Message Boards website will shut down. Our message boards on individual properties (like Yahoo! Finance and Yahoo! Fantasy Sports) will remain active. We also encourage you to ask and answer questions on Yahoo! Answers, and discuss issues in the comments section on Yahoo! News.
Yahoo! Updates API As of April 16, 2013, we will no longer support the Yahoo! Updates API.
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This article has been reproduced from Sridhar’s blog.
