Ibrahim just buzzed me with the news that eBay have acquired StumbleUpon for $75m, creating yet another set of .dot com millionaires. According to a eBay spokesperson, StumbleUpon has approximately 2.3 million users and delivers about 5 million recommendations every day.
To be honest I’m a bit disappointed that StumbleUpon decided to get into bed with eBay rather than another suitor, as I’m a big fan of StumbleUpon, and I’m sure eBay intend to use StumbleUpon to steer users towards auctions that they might find interesting.
I’m not sure if I want my browsing behaviour made available to eBay. I love the SU service and use it quite frequently, and it has driven a lot of traffic to my site. One of the attractions of the service is it is fairly ad-free, and I wonder if a fundamental change such as auction ads suddenly appearing will drive users away?
What do you think about the eBay – StumbleUpon merger – thumbs up or down? Do you think it will deliver any synergies, or will it be yet another .com merger which will struggle to create value like Google-YouTube and eBay-PaypalSkype?
