14 DAY TRIAL // Yahoo's Marissa Mayer has been complaining that her company is focused, or rather unfocused, on too many things and that it needs to start doubling down on the things it does well.
Now, she's taking actual steps in that direction announcing in a spring cleaning post that a number of apps and products will be shut down.
"After much thought and deliberation, we decide to shut down some products. Before making these decisions, we look at a variety of factors," Yahoo explained.
"The most critical question we ask is whether the experience is truly a daily habit that still resonates for all of you today," it added.
"Ultimately, we’re making these changes in an effort to sharpen our focus. By continuing to hone in on our core products and experiences, we’ll be able to make our existing products the very best they can be," it said.
One of the products that Yahoo is killing off is Avatars, which allows users to create highly customized avatars to be used in Yahoo Messenger and its other social products.
With Yahoo focusing very little on the social aspects, since it offloaded most of that to Facebook, it makes sense perhaps that Avatars will be gone.
As of April 1st, 2013, Avatars will no longer be supported by any Yahoo product. You can download an image of your current avatar if you'd like to keep it.
On the same day, Yahoo will also be killing off Yahoo Message Boards. This is just the global website, specific boards, for Yahoo Finance or Yahoo Fantasy Sports for example, won't be affected.
Yahoo is also killing off Yahoo Clues and Yahoo App Search and Yahoo SPorts IQ, all on April 1. The Yahoo Updates API will be shut down on April 16.
Finally, Yahoo is also shutting down the BlackBerry app. It will continue to work for those that have it installed, but there won't be any updates. You can still grab it until April 1.