In an unsigned solicitous , the company declared: "No, we are not shutting down Delicious. While we have determined that there is not a strategic fit at Yahoo!, we believe there is [an] ideal home for Delicious outside of the company where it can be resourced to the level where it can be competitive."

"We're in the process of exploring a variety of options and talking to companies right now," it added. "And we'll share our plans with you as soon as we can." Or, considering how the original news reached the public----until another embarrassing revelation occurs.

What options for Delicious are available to Yahoo? One suggestion by Chris Dixon, co-founder of the personal recommendation site Hunch, is to make the site an open source project. That idea has been rapped via by Joshua Schachter, the original creator of Delicious who sold it to Yahoo in 2005.

Although Schacter sees difficulties for anyone thinking of buying Delicious from Yahoo, he's playing coy about repurchasing the service, which is ranked 255 in U.S. web traffic by Alexa. He told Dan Frommer, at Business Insider, that what he's going to do and is waiting for things to develop.

Whatever Yahoo does, this latest gaffe suggests that the company knows more about counting beans than the value of the beans it has. It also suggests that Web 2.0 is a thin veneer for Yahoo. Scratch it, and you'll see its Web 1.0 origins.