eBay Acquiring StumbleUpon

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1. NetScoopTV
   

   April 18th, 2007 at 11:41 am

   Interesting… I really like StumbleUpon. I take it the purpose of the buyout is to buy eyeballs?

2. Raoul
   

   April 18th, 2007 at 11:44 am

   I’ve been using them for a while and I like them. They also provide a small but steady stream of visitors to my blog, which is nice.

3. Boris
   

   April 18th, 2007 at 11:51 am

   70 million seems a bit low. I hope they go for more than that…

4. Sean
   

   April 18th, 2007 at 11:51 am

   There is a pretty good article on webpodge that explains why Stumbleupon is worth $50 million plus.

   http://webpodge.com/2006/11/15.....0-million/

5. Robert Dewey
   

   April 18th, 2007 at 11:52 am

   While I didn’t particularly care for the service itself, I can definitely see why people would like it - StumbleUpon is definitely awesome at what they do.

   Congrats to them.

6. Rex
   

   April 18th, 2007 at 11:55 am

   Not to shabby, AOL or eBay? That is quite a toss up. Both need a boost right now.

   Rex

7. Greg
   

   April 18th, 2007 at 11:56 am

   I love this application. Hopefully they did shoot higher than $75M

8. Michael Arrington
   

   April 18th, 2007 at 12:00 pm

   updated post - It’s ebay.

9. Blake
   

   April 18th, 2007 at 12:01 pm

   I love StumbleUpon too. It’s always struck me that their targeting would be very affective for something like Digg. With the Digg model, you get a “mob rules” popularity, while with a StumbleUpon targeting model, you’d get like-minded individuals voting up and down articles in a personalized format. Much more useful for people with diverse interests.

   Anyway, kudos to them!

10. Sprezzatura
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 12:05 pm

    I’ve tried StumbleUpon and found it not very useful or fun, but I can see why it might be an interesting feature add-on for eBay.

11. Robert Dewey
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 12:09 pm

    I just don’t know about eBay… If I was an eBay stock holder, I’d be selling right about now. Like I said, StumbleUpon is a good application, but I don’t see what it has to do with eBay (much like Skype).

    However… they could use such services to integrate a level of sociality to the eBay auction site. If they aggregated the relationships found within Skype and StumbleUpon, they would be able to recommend products based on what your network is buying or selling.

    Not likely to happen, but it’s a good idea (hint: get some real innovators in your company - do something with your assets)

12. Zaid
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 12:13 pm

    StumbleUpon + Skype + eBay = zombo.com

    Just wait…

13. Drama 2.0
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 12:23 pm

    Skype 2.0?

14. Amanda
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 12:30 pm

    Ugh. That pisses me off I love stumble i hate ebay

15. Jason Wu
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 12:31 pm

    I used to work at eBay, and I have to say, their management is clueless. Promotions at eBay are done by who-knows-who and seniority, not ability.

    Nobody ever talks about buying things on eBay anymore. There are too many better alternatives now, and eBay has lost its coolness factor. It’s actually embarrassing now to admit you are using eBay to buy things. Selling on eBay still makes sense as long as you’re selling trash that you can’t sell anywhere else.

    With eBay sales volume no longer growing, the Skype acquisition was an act of total desperation. Skype has nothing to do with the core competency (which admittedly is weak) of eBay. StumbleUpon has even less to do with it.

    eBay is dying, but PayPal might save eBay in the end, isn’t that funny? I look forward to the day it’s called “eBay — a PayPal company”.

16. Jonathan Cohen
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 12:32 pm

    Very odd. I agree with Robert (#11). Unless they’re tying in the StumbleUpon functionality to “You may like this product so click here,” it seems completely unrelated to eBay.

    Alternatively, they could provide eBay auctions based on the suggested sites, but that seems like a nightmare to administer.

17. drew olanoff
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 12:35 pm

    why? lol.

18. Wil Schroter
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 12:42 pm

    I know it’s a stretch, but I wonder if this is similar to Amazon buying Alexa to try to bring traffic/search to their portal.

    Here’s something to consider - if $40 million buys the company, what is the value of the potential traffic and product upsell revenue that eBay could generate by owning it’s own search engine?

    Think about the TV media costs to run ads for a few months. $40 million in an off-line campaign to attract users isn’t unheard of. So to own 1m uniques per month for the same price?

    Don’t think of it as a strategic product buy, think of it as a strategic ad buy. Not necessarily a good one, but…

19. rod
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 12:45 pm

    Hey - eBay isn’t buying eyeballs or traffic, people. They are buying the technology for a DISCOVERY SERVICE to get browsers deeper into eBay and improve the ebay search experience.

    http://techfold.com/2007/04/18.....umbleupon/

20. Sergio
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 12:51 pm

    I am shocked that Yahoo, MSN, Google, or Ask didn’t aquire them. That seemed like a perfect marriage of technologies. Does anyone know if Stumble holds patents to their technology. That would seem to be the only reason why a search would not buy them–if social stumbling could be easily replicated.

    I absolutely love StumbleUpon. Once you get into it, you can just spend hours discovering new things on the web. I hope that they don’t lose their magic in this acquisition.

    Good luck Garrett, Geoff and Justin!

21. Matthew Stotts
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 12:51 pm

    Interesting point on the “ad buy” Will. congrats to Garret, Geoff and Justin!

22. Direct Textbooks
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 12:53 pm

    I don’t think it necessarily needs to have anything to do with eBay’s central business. The reported price seems like a good price, period, so I don’t see it being a bad decision.

23. Randy Smythe
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 12:58 pm

    Another development to lend creedence to the eBay rumor. eBay just announced that they would start allowing sellers to link to video hosted on aprroved sites. Since video Stumbling is the driver of all this new traffic to Stumble Upon, I see some product stumbling in our future.

24. trevo
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 1:01 pm

    @15: Jason

    Where are you getting the idea that eBay is “dying”? I have no clue of the other competitors you are talking about. If there ever is an internet monopoly, eBay is it. I still buy and sell tons of things, books, DVD, electronics, cheap Hong Kong knockoffs of cellphone accesories and I buy and sell them all on eBay or Half.com. Sure I buy some used books from Amazon now and then, but eBay is as strong as ever.

    Saying that, the Skype deal must have been proposed by a person who is as dumb as a door knob… I sure hope that guy has been fired from eBay.

25. Casey
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 1:12 pm

    I love Stumble and advertise on their system for a few clients. I am surprised eBay purchased them as it would seem a much better fit for Yahoo or Google.

    This acquisition actually worries me a bit, I dont really see the correlation between the two and am worried how eBay will run the site/system. Paypal sucks, eBay has gone downhill in my mind as I rarely buy things there anymore.

    I just don’t see much improvement or innovation form eBay. If they are buying this as an ad buy, this sucks.

26. max
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 1:13 pm

    Yes, maybe stumbleupon can help ebay by letting ebay stumble all their auctions randomly throughout the stumbles at which point i might stop using it…. well, that’s the worst case but maybe they might leave it alone.

27. Dave G
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 1:19 pm

    Congratulations to StumbleUpon - launched in 2002, took a small investment, and kicked some arse.

    Mike, your forums are down.

28. engtech
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 1:20 pm

    I’m happy to hear this for the guys who do StumbleUpon - it’s a great product and one of the few web2.0 winners. I hope they don’t get caught in the “post-acquisition zombie state” that happens to so many start-ups after acquisition where no improvements happen anymore.

    my SU username is http://ninetimessix.stumbleupon.com if anyone wants to add me.

29. Tony K
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 1:27 pm

    Does anyone know how long as stumbleupon.com been around?

30. Deathseeker
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 1:33 pm

    I also don’t like too much the idea of eBay acquiring StumbleUpon: the freedom of choice, publishing content and even social bookmarking quality may reduce and it will become one more of eBay’s marketing engines. Well, that’s just myself dreaming a little bit, but if eBay acquired StumbleUpon they want something in return. And they will surely get it.

31. Vijay
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 1:44 pm

    Man Stumble upon is one of the best site. Everyone I know love it. 100, Million anytime. Ram Shriram - This guy is definitely Midas.

32. noseoguru
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 1:45 pm

    I like that StumbleUpon deals with spam sites very effectively. I have never seen an MFA site on the system and I bet that many are submitted. Kudos to the founders for the aquisition.

33. Rich
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 1:46 pm

    Tony - from what I recall I think they’ve been around since 2001. They were small, typical start-up in one of the founders basements. They moved from Canada(?) to SF about a 9mo-1yr ago…

34. Saket Kumar
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 2:06 pm

    I Love StumbleUpon. Based on what eBay paid for Skype, this deal can easily fetch north of $75

    Go StumbleUpon!!

35. ejv
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 2:11 pm

    The UV number looks suspicious. They’ve basically been flat then all of a sudden a spike around the time they think of selling. Makes you wonder how much they are paying for that extra traffic and what ebay is really getting, other than swindled.

36. How to start a clothing line from scratch
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 2:13 pm

    I really love stumble upon…it gives my blog some traffic every now and then.

37. pallet jack
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 2:20 pm

    You dont pay 65-70 mill to “leave something alone” if you cant integrate it - dont buy it

    - Ebay will be the master ad - server through stumble upon.

    - Ebay is a whore

38. MistOne
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 2:34 pm

    lots of eBay dissing going on, anybody see their latest financial reports…..very strong!
    http://www.businessweek.com/ap.....J7UBO1.htm

    While Skype has yet to be logically integrated into eBay, it is still the killer VOIP app, and eBay sure is glad Goolge or Yahoo didn’t get it.

39. Jay (living in First Life)
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 2:56 pm

    Interesting acquisition. Another example of big internet companies (namely eBay, Yahoo, and now Google) buying growing start-ups (JumpCut, FlickR, Delicious, Skype) with crappy revenue models. Good for the founders. StumbleUpon is actually cool, but I get the feeling with the barrier to entry being so low and the content belonging to users themselves, someone will come along with something cooler, flip it, and the end losers are the acquirers.

    If I were an eBay shareholder, I’d have dumped all my shares the day they bought Skype. You can’t support everything with advertising. There isn’t enough advertising to go around in the world. What happens when everything that has a marginal cost goes to 0 and goes ad-supported? We spoil consumers, ruin real business, and destroy real innovation.

40. Rob Abbott
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 3:08 pm

    eBay has been looking for a social commerce solution.

    StumbleUpon will be good for eBay in the Ad space and hopefully they will learn from their success in the social space and apply it to the their biggest social network…the eBay community.

    Then hopefully we’ll see a social commerce experience evolve out of that combination.

    Congrats to George Liang, he just left the Disruptive Innovations team (the same team I’m leaving) at eBay to join StumbleUpon as their Director of Product & User Experience in late 2006.

    It pays to take some risk…StumbleUpon…Bix…TellMe all organizations seeded with eBay alumni that have been recently acquired by companies like Microsoft and Yahoo.

    

41. Matt Jones
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 3:21 pm

    I’m not surprised, stubleupon is band on what Web2.0 is all about, but they added a tasty new flavour into the mix, good for them.

42. kosmar
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 3:38 pm

    unless they merge accounts its ok for me. but ebay seemed too lazy earlier for such things.

43. Sean
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 3:46 pm

    eBay makes the dumbest acquisitions. PayPal made sense. But then there also Skype (huh?), and now this (wtf?). Neither of these fit into eBay’s service in any way, shape or form. Lame, lame, lame.

44. Özel Ders Eğitim Kurs
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 3:52 pm

    I disagree with Sean, I think Skype is extremely useful and will grow in the future. I think eBay is making strategic decisions that will aid them in the long. They may not fit into eBay’s service, but they all have a bright future in front of them.

45. Jessica
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 5:32 pm

    Mike,

    Would you mind moving your “Trackbacks/Pings” table BELOW your comments table? Annoying and useless to the average reader.

    Well, ok.. IMO.

46. William Morris
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 5:43 pm

    This is great for SU - it’s a great service and great social, vibrant community behind it. Good for them and good for eBay!

47. RaJ
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 7:16 pm

    Its Good for Stumble upon to getting acquired. But question is what eBay is gong to do with SU.

    http://www.suggestusability.com

48. jack
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 8:55 pm

    Why ebay? interesting

49. Nathan
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 10:27 pm

    I don’t understands eBay’s strategy… First the Skype purchase was badly explained (something to do with letting users talk to one another) and now this… Are they going to be randomly directing people to their product auction pages?

50. KR
    

    April 18th, 2007 at 10:46 pm

    this tc article is the first time i have heard of StumbleUpon. I signed up and tried it out. Very cool. Within a couple of minutes, I was seeing cool sites of interest that I have been trying to Google for some time. Much better for my particular research area. I have been trying to get more familiar with digg, but still haven’t mastered that site yet.

    I just wish I had known them earlier. Hopefully eBay does what Rod #19 states and improves the navigation engine of eBay, but at the same time leaves their core site alone.

    Although I too wonder about the Skype acquisition, I am a loyal and enthusiastic Skyke user, though have never used Skype for any eBay/PayPal purpose…to date. Let’s hope Stumble Upon is left alone to Stumble along there already promising start.

51. Sramana Mitra
    

    April 19th, 2007 at 1:12 am

    For a long time, I have believed that eBay should have spent money on advertising venue oriented companies, and thought that the Skype acquisition was a stupid move. Only now, it seems to me that eBay’s leadership is coming to the same conclusion! Read the rest of my thesis.

52. w2i
    

    April 19th, 2007 at 2:56 am

    $40 - $45 million buys you 900K uniques/mo, it sounds a bit too much to me…

53. IdeaTagger
    

    April 19th, 2007 at 5:19 am

    I reckon, as I have explained in my blog post (link below), that there will be an ebay-stumbleupon widget that enables publishers to monetise their blogs/sites.
    http://www.ideatagging.com/mon.....on-widget/

54. Michael Fomkin
    

    April 19th, 2007 at 5:48 am

    good for them

55. Ebay Taking Over StumbleUpon - Worth a Gaander
    

    April 19th, 2007 at 5:54 am

    I’ve come across some decent sites and online games on StumbleUpon in the past. Hope they do well for themselves.

56. Zeus Epithemeus
    

    April 19th, 2007 at 5:59 am

    I wish we dont stumble upon Ebay ads.

57. Grzegorz Daniluk
    

    April 19th, 2007 at 7:46 am

    eBay buys traffic? I don’t get it. How many people who know StumbleUpon and use it don’t know what eBay is?

58. Garth
    

    April 19th, 2007 at 9:23 am

    This has not yet been announced, and no journalists are reporting it has happened either.

    Did Mike jump the gun?

59. Wil Schroter
    

    April 19th, 2007 at 11:49 am

    Don’t think of it as 900k uniques today. If the site is growing as fast as it is and continues, then it’s a value on projected uniques.

    Since they own the site, the search volume could be worth many multiples.

    Think about what people said about the pricetag of MySpace at the time. Everyone thought it was stupid, now it’s known as a great investment.

60. Billy Mills
    

    April 19th, 2007 at 1:00 pm

    $40,000,000 for a site with 900,000 unique visitors and 2,000,000 toolbar downloads “not installs” –thats absurd. Plus, some believe their traffic to be even lower checkout eBizMBA’s data: http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/top25-web2.html

61. agent smith
    

    April 19th, 2007 at 2:03 pm

    This is what I’ve been afraid of since I started using StumbleUpon: A mass audience, the AOLification of a cool service. The MySpace-ing down of the content and the ratings. ugh.

62. Adam Senour
    

    April 20th, 2007 at 3:16 pm

    This doesn’t make any sense to me…why would eBay want to acquire StumbleUpon? It’s got nothing to do with anything eBay offers.

63. John Jackson
    

    April 21st, 2007 at 8:47 pm

    Don’t trust ebay.

64. Zoltan Szendro
    

    April 22nd, 2007 at 2:46 pm

    I think we are seeing a trend of moving from Page Ranking to User Ranking as the next search engine concept. Gone is the time when content means a web page or blog article, and relevancy is decided based on links between pages established by content authors. I am not sure about Ebay as a buyer in this context, but if you think about Yahoo’s MyBlogLog as a user behavior tracking system and not just a social networking platform, it may make sense for Ebay to track users and therefore collecting a new type of authoritative information. These apps are not only pushing data to, but collecting them from users as well.

    I have more on this at RealBird’s blog in the context of search engine marketing and real estate:
    http://realbird.typepad.com/ne.....ine_2.html

65. seo499
    

    April 23rd, 2007 at 2:59 am

    ebay trying to getebay users to stumble ebay listings

66. kcaHack
    

    April 25th, 2007 at 2:54 pm

    I love StumbleUpon…Hopefully this will mean we will see more of the premium features provided for free users…

    Everyone who said dump your Ebay stock, SELL IT ALL TO ME… the thing to fear (as a Stumbleupon user) is Stumbleupon + eBay = (Extensive Profile of Likes & dislikes) + (Massive e-commerce & advertiser). Think about it.. Stumbleupon, if used correctly, has the potential to identify everything from your political interests to your sexual preferences to every interest you have and your views on every subject! It’s a wet dream both an advertisers & sellers of every kind. Even with that said I don’t think I’d ever stop using it.. IT’S TOO COOL of a service. What this could mean for eBay is one of the most in depth targeted advertising & e-commerce solution every seen! Sure SU only has 2.1 mil users… but how many user does eBay have? and now picture most of them using the new eBay-Stumble bar, and the vast amounts of data that can be collected based on category’s, tags, and comments. Hell if eBay picked them up for only 50mil thats a bargain.