Ebay Acquires StumbleUpon in $75 Million Deal

Posted on May 31, 2007

eBay has acquired the popular StumbleUpon social bookmarking toolbar. The service helps people discovered websites, articles, videos and more and recommended them to others. The rumor is eBay paid $75 million from StumbleUpon.

Michael Buhr, senior director, eBay, said in a statement, "StumbleUpon is a great fit within our goal of pioneering new communities based on commerce and sustained by trust. 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."

StumbleUpon has about 2.3 million users according to eBay. Wired's Epicenter says Ebay may have use for StumbleUpon in a battle against the large search engine leaders.

Om Malik points out an interesting scenario for the new acquisiton: "By marrying the toolbar to Skype client, eBay can do an end run around Google's dominance of the search business. A simple search box inside Skype client is all it would take."

StumbleUpon also has a lot of young users that eBay probably hopes will come and use its online auction service. Ebay's acquisition of StumbleUpon has been rumored for the past month.

Photo: StumbleUpon