AOL is shutting three data-storage services, including one of the Internet's earliest photo-sharing sites, as the outfit tries to slash its costs and make more cash on advertising.

AOL Pictures, the year-old media-sharing site, BlueString, and the online backup service, Xdrive, have been listed for their final breakfast and to shake hands with the executioner for later this year. Xdrive, the media back-up servicewhich AOL bought in 2005 for an undisclosed fee, might be saved if the ISP can find a buyer for it.

AOL said that the decision to "sunset these products", which is a euphemism for scrapping them,  is part of a cunning plan to focus on the areas where we can win and to move away from products or features that are not contributing to its growth. AOL Pictures began in 1998 as You've Got Pictures and came at a time Internet users had few options to share their digital photos.

It has since been eclipsed by Yahoo's Flickr and Google Picasa. BlueString launched last year as a repository for other media files such as video and music as well, but was spurned like a rabid dog.