, a social sharing tool, now belongs to Yahoo, a company that surely hopes to maintain some semblance of relevancy at a time when Internet travelers are leaping headlong into social sites and mobile apps.

Will it be a Pinterest lookalike? Perhaps Yahoo's version of will incorporate search like Microsoft's Socl network. by itself already bore more than a passing resemblance to Pinterest, and if it's smart, Yahoo will absolutely incorporate its own search engine into the new social platform. 

Promise Delivered

Only one day before the announced buy, Yahoo COO Henrique De Castro told a Munich, Germany based conference audience that Yahoo needed a transformation, and that its tech and personalization were behind the times. That much is quite obvious, and indeed De Castro may have been alluding to the imminent announcement, but either on Yahoo better be fantastic, or there better be more changes ahead for the once mighty Internet giant.

Under the watchful eye of CEO Marissa Mayer, a former Google exec, Yahoo has already updated the look of its still quite popular Web mail app, and now it's eyeing the social world. We don't know yet what Yahoo plans to do with or even the terms of the deal, but we do know has ceased operating its standalone version. users will find an announcement on the main page about the acquisition, along with a download button for gathering up all the snips they've built over the last year and a half. Not the Savior

While an intriguing buy, will likely be but one part of Yahoo's plan to reengage people. If it can get people from the mail and portal sections into the new social layer, it could very will have something. Better yet, it could take the Yahoo Axis browser, launched last year, and build it out with the tools.


Let's see if any of the Hall of Fame (pictured) users stick around for the Yahoo version. 

Then it would really be more like the Microsoft Socl platform we reviewed in December. That's actually a good thing because we liked the use of Bing search there, and Yahoo could do the same. Design wise, it will need to be massively creative to separate itself from places like Digg and the above mentioned Pinterest. 

Whatever Yahoo does, it will need to be dramatic even if the buy is just one step along the way. The company doesn't feel like it is all that innovative anymore, to be honest, so that might be too much to ask.