Looks like the rumors were true. Auction site eBay is shelling out $75 million to buy social web discovery service StumbleUpon.According to the press release, the acquisition gives eBay exposure to StumbleUpon's growing community of over 2 million users. Still seems like an awkward match to us. In recent years, eBay purchased PayPal, but that was a no-brainer, and Skype, which has an obvious commercial aspect.
The company hardly needed StumbleUpon to build its brand recognition. And if they just start injecting eBay auctions willy nilly into stumble results, they'll pretty much break the community they bought as members begin to evacuate the spam-laden sinking ship. Still, a separate "stumble to find books, computer parts, or hummels" section could make a lot of sense.
eBay senior director Michael Buhr assumes the post of general manager of StumbleUpon, while StumbleUpon's current management team remains in place.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-31-2007 @ 7:32AM
keeves said...
let's face it, if you find an item on ebay that you want, your not going to tell the whole world about it as that would just be stupid and increase the amount of bidding on it.
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5-31-2007 @ 8:43AM
Marcus said...
Yet another TechCrunchClone article. Is DownloadSquad having an identity crisis? Almost every single TechCrunch article is duplicated here.
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