More than a decade after its launch, the Yahoo! Picks website has been shut down, it has been announced. In a statement made by the search engine provider, it was revealed that the site, which was launched in 1995, would no longer be added to.
The company stated: "We're sorry to say that Picks has stopped updating. After 12 years, we're moving on to new projects and fresh ways of highlighting cool sites across the web."
It went on, however, to say that it will "still be here in different guises", for example on Yahoo! Green - writing about eco-friendly websites - and Yahoo! Buzz Log - "sifting through what people are searching for online".
The Yahoo! Picks archive will also remain available for those who wish to explore it.
Established in the pre-blog era, the site initially provided a weekly service showing which sites Yahoo! employees had picked out as the highlights of the web.
Gradually this expanded into a daily update service and was eventually transformed into a blog in 2004.
Yahoo! did not provide reasons for shutting down the service, although Duncan Riley of TechCrunch states: "In an age of mass-produced and often automated link swapping and recommendations, the service is by comparison archaic and probably not seeing an awful lot of traffic."
However, according to Mr Riley, when the site was first launched it enjoyed considerable popularity, with few alternatives for people looking for "cool sites".
