Social bookmarking site del.icio.us has had a new lifeline tossed to it. Yahoo announced today that the service was bought by YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen.

The two will roll Delicious into their new venture, Avos, saying they want to expand the service. Avos’s statement said Hurley and Chen have “firsthand experience enabling millions of users to share their experiences”, before resorting to the Internet PR phrasebook and promising to “take Delicious to the next level”.

The Hurley / Chen vision for Delicious is to create “the best information discovery service” on the Internet
Current del.icio.us users will be contacted and be given the option to either opt-in to the new service, or export their data if they want to leave.

This one may be one to watch, these guys made $1.6 billion when they sold YouTube to Google, so they have financial backing and experience in building successful social networks. Now may be a golden opportunity to get in on the ground floor before this takes off. You can keep an eye on progress at avos.com