Deutsche Bank is still out there trying to find a buyer for eBay’s StumbleUpon business, we’ve heard from new sources (we first reported on this on September 18). But there’s one problem: while eBay wants to unload the business, they aren’t willing to sell it for less than $75 million, the price they paid for it in May 2007.
StumbleUpon’s 2008 revenues are estimated to be $6 million or so.
eBay has denied the sale attempt, but there are too many people who’ve seen the deal book and have heard Deutsche Bank’s pitch. The big question is, will it sell?
As we wrote in our last post, StumbleUpon’s traffic has stagnated or declined, depending on which analytics service you look at. StumbleUpon says usage is growing at a fast clip, despite website traffic, because most users never visit the site after downloading the toolbar.
Ok, but StumbleUpon didn’t mind pointing to usage stats in the early days before the sale to eBay. And the stats are likely irrelevant anyway, since StumbleUpon recently deprioritized the toolbar to let users “stumble” to new sites directly from the website. Expect traffic to grow quickly with that change.
Update: Yet another source who’s been pitched says Ebay may consider a $50 million deal. I’m starting to feel like I should get a finders fee.