The way they handled the leak was idiotic and short sighted. They should blame themselves, not the press.
Their first reply should have clarified that Delicious was not going to be shut down. Furthermore, they should have clearly stated that other prominent properties (like Flickr) were safe and weren't going to be shut down either.
Their initial response ("[we] plan to shut down some products in the coming months") was self-inflicted FUD, which basically stated that they were going to shut down whatever they saw fit. Not the best way to instill confidence in your products.
I suspect they panicked, saw the huge backlash from the community, and quickly came up with the plan of selling delicious and claiming that they were misunderstood from the get go.
The really interesting thing is how long they let this play without any kind of clarification at all. This ran for 24 hours before Yahoo jumped on this. I think you're probably right, surely if they meant to sell this then the response would have been far quicker? Letting this sit out there as a dead service for 24 hours doesn't do a lot for valuations.
Which does raise an interesting question: why the hell would you just shut the thing down and not even attempt to sell it?
Because they didn't think they could get enough for it to be worth the hassle of selling it. Why do people throw things away that they could sell at a yard sale?
What about this 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."
That's what convinced me to join a competing service, which is pretty much the absolute worst outcome for a PR statement.
Their first reply should have clarified that Delicious was not going to be shut down. Furthermore, they should have clearly stated that other prominent properties (like Flickr) were safe and weren't going to be shut down either.
Their initial response ("[we] plan to shut down some products in the coming months") was self-inflicted FUD, which basically stated that they were going to shut down whatever they saw fit. Not the best way to instill confidence in your products.
I suspect they panicked, saw the huge backlash from the community, and quickly came up with the plan of selling delicious and claiming that they were misunderstood from the get go.