Yahoo will shut down its Buzz story-rating service on April 21, the company announced Monday.

"As of this date, you will be unable to access the Yahoo Buzz site," Yahoo said in a statement. "This was a hard decision. However this will help us focus on our core strengths and new innovations."

Yahoo Buzz . The service allowed users to "see and share updates such as when they've uploaded photos, changed their status, buzzed up a news story or posted a new restaurant review, all from Yahoo," the company said at the time.

Webmaster could add a "Buzz Up" button to their Web site and readers who wanted to Buzz an article that did not have the Buzz button attached could submit it directly on the Yahoo Buzz Web site. PCMag and its blogs were among the 100 sites that participated in the alpha trial for the service when it launched in February 2008.

In December, that Yahoo was shutting down several of its Web properties, including Delicious, , and AltaVista, according to a Yahoo presentation slide that was posted on Twitter. Yahoo confirmed at that point that it would shut down Yahoo Buzz, its Traffic APIs and other products, but did not provide a timeline.

"Part of our organizational streamlining involves cutting our investment in underperforming or off-strategy products to put better focus on our core strengths and fund new innovation in the next year and beyond," a Yahoo spokeswoman said at the time.

Delicious, however, , and insisted that it was instead shopping for a home outside of Yahoo. In March, Business Insider reported that Yahoo was nearing a deal to sell Delicious for $1-2 million.