Yahoo hammers final nail in Jumpcut coffin
The Net pioneer had already idled the site for sharing and combining online videos, but now it's closing it June 15.
- Shankland covered the tech industry for more than 25 years and was a science writer for five years before that. He has deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and more.
In December, Yahoo all but killed its Jumpcut online video site by disabling new uploads and telling users to head to Flickr. Now the company said it's closing the site altogether in two months.
"After careful consideration, we will be officially closing the Jumpcut.com site on June 15, 2009," a note on the site says. "This was a difficult decision to make, but it's part of the ongoing prioritization efforts at Yahoo."
The closure is no surprise. Yahoo, with its own financial issues compounded by the recession, is under pressure to cut expenses. It's getting a $120 million infusion by selling its stake in South Korean e-commerce company Gmarket and could announce a new round of layoffs when it reports first-quarter financial results Tuesday.
Jumpcut let people upload and share videos, but also combine them into larger works. This option is still available for existing videos, but people's remixed videos can't be downloaded.
In December, Yahoo had said it would keep the site available "for the foreseeable future." Now it's telling people they'll have to retrieve their videos if they want to keep them.
"Very soon, we'll be releasing a software utility that will allow you to download the movies you created on Jumpcut to your computer. We'll send instructions to the email address on your Jumpcut account when the download utility is available," the company said.
Via All Things D