Joshua Schachter is surrounded by lawyers and his phone is ringing off the hook.  He just sold his two-year old company, del.icio.us, to Yahoo today for an undisclosed sum (estimated to be in the $15 million to $30 $20 million range).  “All I want is to go home and sleep right now,”  says the 31-year-old founder, who started the site as a hobby before quitting his job at Morgan Stanley to build the company.  His nine-person startup has 300,000 registered users, and in the past month or so traffic to del.icio.us has tripled, as more and more people get hooked on posting, tagging, and sharing Web bookmarks with each other.

Social bookmarking site del.icio.us has announced that it has been purchased by Yahoo!

We’re proud to announce that del.icio.us has joined the Yahoo! family.  Together we’ll continue to improve how people discover, remember and share on the Internet, with a big emphasis on the power of community.  We’re excited to be working with the Yahoo! Search team – they definitely get social systems and their potential to change the web. (We’re also excited to be joining our fraternal twin Flickr!)

The deal was also confirmed in a post on the Yahoo! Search blog although terms of the deal were not disclosed.  The acquisition adds another component to Yahoo!’s Web 2.0 and social media strategy.