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No hint Yahoo was to close news forums: executive

Last Updated: Friday, December 29, 2006 | 7:18 PM ET

CBC News

A senior executive with Yahoo Canada Co. says he was surprised to learn that the internet media company's U.S. parent Yahoo Inc. had shut down its news message boards.

Users of Yahoo Inc.'s news discussion forums on Friday were greeted with a note telling them the message boards had been removed and would be replaced in the months ahead.

In a telephone interview with CBC News Online, Yahoo Canada's director of public relations said he had last spoken with his office on Thursday night and the call was the first he had heard of the closure.

"I didn't see anything that would have indicated that was something they had planned," Clive Hobson said.

In a letter to readers, Neil Budde, Yahoo Inc.'s general manager of news, said that the message forums had been removed to stop some users from controlling the discourse. He also noted that there were technical problems with the forums' structure.

"The Yahoo News message boards allowed a small number of vocal users to dominate the discussion," Budde wrote. "In addition, related discussions from similar news articles were not easily linked."

Budde wrote that the company is working to create a new message board system that will be unveiled early in 2007.

"While we work on our new community features, the message boards that were linked from individual news articles have been taken offline," Budde wrote. "Over the next few months, we plan to offer new discussion forums based on topics in the news and incorporating the latest features to foster a better discussion for all of our readers."

Hobson said he did not believe users of the internet media company's Canadian service Yahoo.ca would be directly affected by the move.

"I believe that I would have received a call on the cellphone if there was going to be any impact," Hobson said.

A U.S. spokesperson for Yahoo could not be reached for comment.

This story is now closed to commenting.

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