Rumor: EBay Trying to Sell StumbleUpon
According to a report on TechCrunch, eBay is trying to sell the popular recommendation engine StumbleUpon, which eBay bought for $75 million in early 2007. It was never clear to us why eBay bought StumbleUpon in the first place. When the acquisition was first announced, we speculated that eBay would use StumbleUpon's technology to create a new, viral way of shopping. In the end, though, eBay never integrated StumbleUpon into its business.
In early 2007, we complained that eBay's line-up of new services started to look very chaotic. Now, with its auction business slowly declining, it would only make sense for eBay to focus on its core competencies again instead of investing time and money into products that do not contribute to its main business.
StumbleUpon was a bargain at $75 million and probably a worthwhile experiment for eBay, but now that eBay's future does not look as rosy as it once did, we think it only makes sense for eBay to sell it off again. According to TechCrunch, eBay has hired Deutsche Bank to find a buyer, though the asking price is not clear.
We contacted eBay about these rumors and will update this post once we get a response.
Skype?
It would be easy to draw parallels to eBay's acquisition of Skype, which eBay bought for the staggering amount of $2.6 billion. Skype, too, was never fully integrated into eBay's business model. However, as Peter Kafka notes, this extremely high purchase price also makes a sale very difficult now, unless eBay is willing to take a loss. Only a handful of companies are able to pay $3 billion or more, which leaves Google as one of the few potential candidates.
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Ebay might as well continue to keep Skype with that high of an asking price and figure out how to expand on it and connect it more with their ebay model Maybe supplying another form of interaction between two parties through their auction service.
Craig
www.budgetpulse.com
Frederic, correction:
"which eBay bought for the staggering amount of $2.6 billion"
-- actually that was around the figure they would have bought it for if and only if certain numbers were met. Since those numbers were never met eBay paid, much, much less than that.
Poor feebay. Going broke fast. Unloading this 'asset' is not going to help their dire financial situation one bit. They have no one to blame other than themselves for having alienated their core user base with corporate greed and shoddy (to non existant) customer service. Woe is you feebay. :D
I currently sell on AlsoShop - www.alsoshop.com - amongst a host of other free auction site alternatives and have not looked back at the feebay beast ever since.
Who cares. Ebay sucks.
I think StumbleUpon is a great site and a great concept. The whole internet scene needs more Discovery rather than only Search.
Go StumbleUpon, whoever the owner will be. Anyway, in time of economic turmoil it won't be easy to find a buyer quick unless ebay will accept a fairly low price, so SU management might take over... they just need to find a Private Equity fund to back them and make a Management Buy Out. I'd think about it if I were in their shoes.
I never knew that Stumble was owned by Ebay. Its wierd to me that all these random companies are buying websites that have nothing to do with their original service. I guess they are just trying to expand into other avenues. But still, SU really has nothing to do with Ebay. I wonder what their big idea was with it?
It would be AWESOME if Google bought Skype. Man o man.
I'd like to see Google purchase the StumbleUpon bookmarking system and integrate it's features with Google Notebook. I'm a big SU fan and I've used Notebook in the past. I think the two complement each other and they'd make for an excellent product. Also, Google's biggest thing is studying user habits & gathering data — what do you thing SU is doing?
BCarter
http://iwblogger.com
stumbleupon was not and is not a monetizable concept. if it is, it immediately loses its charm. advertisements? interstitials?
all useless. you own something pretty and pretty pointless.
How much is Ebay selling SU? I'm interested to know. Does anyone knows about the detail yet? I mean it has been several days now...
Yeah for real. Where is the follow up to this article. What's the asking price, are there any prospective buyers, was the whole thing a spoof?
Yeah, well I'll sleep a lot better tonight now!....Really who gives a shit anyway, unless your one of the greedy fudcracks thats gonna make money from it?
Ebay, in an effort to be more profitable, has created so many fees that the service isn't as useful as it once was. Thats a different topic I guess but the fee changes get under my skin. I have no idea what they thought stubmleupon was going to do for the online auction business.
Paypal was a more logical acquisition. Still, I wonder how they had planned to use stumbleupon at all?
RS - http://highfade.com
SU was a great idea, but I think EBay bought it just for the potential and realized it did not fit their business model. I think there is still plenty of room for growth for that site!
http://jwojdylo.wordpress.com
Regarding S/U and profitability: I believe S/U was profitable from day one - unless you are a paid sponsor then every so often your Stumble will be a 'paid' Stumble
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How much is Ebay selling SU? I'm interested to know. Does anyone knows about the detail yet? I mean it has been several days now...