Goodbye, Yahoo Picks

Children, gather ’round. When I was a boy, we didn’t have Digg. We didn’t have
Slashdot. When we wanted a big traffic rush, we had to walk eight miles in the
snow to Yahoo Picks — Yahoo Picks Of The
Week & Picks Of The Day — and we liked it. But now, Yahoo Picks is gone.

Bow your head to the news that TechCrunch

highlighted today. Let a tear or two flow down your face as you read the
formal announcement:

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. We’ll still be here in different guises, like on Yahoo! Green writing
about eco-friendly sites, or Yahoo! Answers calling out cool questions, or on
the Yahoo! Buzz Log, sifting through what people are searching for online. And
the Yahoo! Picks archive will remain available to anyone who wants to wander
in. Thanks for your support and attention all these years.

Here’s the first Yahoo Picks Of
The Week (I believe), from August 1995. Note that there was a parody of The
Spot being highlighted. Kids, "The Spot" was what we had for entertainment
before YouTube came along with Mentos & Coke.

And aw, here’s my Access Disk Provider
Report being a Yahoo Pick for
February 2, 2005.

Think back as well to NCSA /
Netscape What’s New, which was a predecessor to Yahoo Picks, highlighting
key sites from June 1993 through February 2005.

Those were the days, my friend….