Comments on: Is eBay Acquiring StumbleUpon?

By: Mark Raratonga

Mark Raratonga — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 00:32:51 +0000

I think it could be useful, but only if they integrate it to find items you like on the internet. Have you seen their personalised news items based on what you look at on the web?

It would be interesting if they recorded this kind of data into search results wouldn’t it?

By: Jason Schramm

Jason Schramm — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 14:40:48 +0000

StumbleUpon doesn’t seem like it’s a fit for Google. Google is all about finding what you are looking for. Not randomly. Yahoo used to have a script that would randomly generate a url from their listings, but then it stopped working. I even had a script based on it that would display a random page using it.

And does anyone else finding it interesting that the logo for the Google feature is dice? Are they saying it’s a gamble?

By: Andy Beal

Andy Beal — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 13:26:35 +0000

@Mike – thanks, I have a similar service. Hopefully you’ll never see the site down for more than a few minutes.

By: kelvin newman

kelvin newman — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 11:20:16 +0000

I can imagine ebay keeping it quite seperate, but I imagine a quick link to ebay on the stumble tool bar might drive a few more clicks their way. Not that they really need it.

By: Mike Dever

Mike Dever — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 03:14:07 +0000

Andy, I can set you up with our AtWatch monitoring service if you’d like. You’d get notified quickly if your site was down. Mike

By: Andy Beal

Andy Beal — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 01:07:54 +0000

@Mark – thanks, not sure what happened, but sorry we weren’t there for your fix.

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 00:45:58 +0000

I’m guessing they will try to insert Ebay ads in a noninvasive fashion perhaps to remind people Ebay is still there… one out of every 10 “stumbles” might have an Ebay ad, or a window pane in which stumbled websites are shown (like IBM commercials) except the top and bottom bars would have Ebay ads. They could be buying a giant awareness campaign for fairly cheap considering the number of stumblers out there. Would it get annoying? Sure. You could argue most advertising is annoying – except for a few bright ideas that become part of our culture.

By: Mark Raratonga

Mark Raratonga — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 23:16:54 +0000

Hate to double post :S but did you know MP was down just before? I came on earlier looking for my daily fix of Marketing news but was stopped in my tracks.

Just a quick heads up…

Mark

By: Mark Raratonga

Mark Raratonga — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 23:11:47 +0000

Google’s in the running to buy almost anything these days. I’m glad they didn’t bother buying it though – I can’t see what Ebay sees in StumbleUpon. I can just imagine the moment that they try to monetize it agressively, the traffic will all but disappear.