Joshua Schachter

Guide Note

Joshua Schachter is the founder of several Internet companies, including social bookmarking service del.icio.us, geoURL and Memepool. On March 29, 2005, Yahoo! acquired del.icio.us for $30 million.¹ Though he worked at Yahoo! for several years, delays on a new version of del.icio.us and other high-level resignations prompted Schachter himself to resign on June 19, 2008.

Fast Facts

1. Born: 1974
2. B.S., Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University (1996)
3. Early 2000s: worked as a programmer for Morgan Stanley
4. June 19, 2008: announced resignation from Yahoo!
5. Del.icio.us announced an add-on for Internet Explorer on the same day as Schachter's resignation²

Schachter had been working with Yahoo! on a new version of del.icio.us since the service's acquisition in 2005. He cited the stalled release of del.icio.us improvements among his reasons for leaving.³

"I’d registered the domain when .us opened the registry, and a quick test showed me the six-letter suffixes that let me generate the most words.

In early discussions, a friend referred to finding good links as 'eating cherries' and the metaphor stuck, I guess.

I somewhat regret using the domain name, because it’s almost impossible to discuss or verify without sounding silly. I’ll probably have to rename it at some point, presumably as something ending in -ster or -zilla or whatever."—Joshua Schachter⁴