eBay Confirms $75M StumbleUpon Acquisition
Wednesday, May 30th, 2007;
-- Jordan McCollum |
As TechCrunch predicted (and we mentioned in passing earlier), eBay announced their acquisition of StumbleUpon today. eBay states that the “aggregate transaction value” was around $75M.
In the official announcement, eBay states that this deal “will provide eBay with in-depth exposure to a fast-growing community-based service with approximately 2.3 million users. StumbleUpon gives people a new way to discover relevant and entertaining content based on personal preferences and community recommendations.”
eBay explains why this is such a good fit:
“StumbleUpon is a great fit within our goal of pioneering new communities based on commerce and sustained by trust,” said, Michael Buhr, senior director, eBay. “StumbleUpon’s downloadable toolbar provides an engaging and unique experience to its users, but it is the similarities in our approaches to the concept of community that make it such a compelling addition to eBay.”
I don’t quite see the connection. TechCrunch’s Nick Gonzalez states:
Although you can imagine “StumbleUpon Shopping†coming soon, eBay is leaving the company alone and taking a wait-and-see approach. The corporation will remain completely intact, except for the addition of eBay’s Michael Buhr, who will serve as general manager for the product.
Do you get it?
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May 30th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
Not really. Unless eBay is hoping to learn from what gets stumbled, I don’t see a lot of synergy. Then again, they own Skype, and there’s not much synergy there either.
Congrats to the Stumbleupon guys!
May 30th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
[...] eBay Confirms $75M StumbleUpon Acquisition Marketing Pilgrim [...]
May 31st, 2007 at 4:56 am
@Andy: There’s might actually be some strategic value in getting Skype and StumbleUpon working together. Ebay seems to be getting more and more interesting in “building communities”, something which auction doesn’t really lend itself very well to (as it’s usually a one-on-one transaction); Skype seems to be taking steps in that direction and acquiring StumbleUpon is a very strong step in that direction. This is all speculation, mind you, would be interesting to see how they see themselves 5 years from now.
May 31st, 2007 at 8:15 am
I thought Google was going to acquire Stumbleupon. seems like that little dice icon in the Google bar saved them millions… or did it?
May 31st, 2007 at 12:21 pm
[...] I don’t quite see the connection. Do you get it? - Marketing Pilgrim [...]
May 31st, 2007 at 5:29 pm
i’ve never cared for ebay, for reasons i won’t go into.
i don’t think ebay’s aquisition of stumble upon will be a good thing in the long run.
i personally will give a thumbs down to any ebay type page i stumble upon to show that i don’t like this.
do you feel the same way? join with me!! boo to ebay!
July 5th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
[...] I only have another year — two years tops — to subscribe to upstart wannabes. Convergence of the sustainable is already underway –witness Yahoo’s acquisition of Flickr, Google’s of YouTube, News Corp’s of MySpace, CBS’s of Last.fm, eBay’s of StumbleUpon …. ). Consumers will pay for these mega-communities, either through advertising litter or a fee for advertising-free services. Others will shed their beta cocoons to emerge with a viable service worthy of a revenue model, as did Trumba. [...]