eBay to dump StumbleUpon, expand classifieds

September 19, 2008

TechCrunch are reporting that eBay are to sell StumbleUpon, the website discovery service they bought in May 2007 for $75million. According to TechCrunch’s source, eBay have hired Deutsche Bank to find a buyer for the site.

Whether they’ll make their money back remains to be seen. Page views per visitor rose from an average 7 in 2007, to 19 in 2008, and registered SU users increased from 5m in April to 6m now: that last statistic is, of course, as meaningless as “registered eBay users”. Actual visitors to the site fell by around 70% from 4.4m in July 2007 to 1.3m in July 2008: its fans may be devoted, but its hard to see StumbleUpon as a hot property.

Frankly, the eBay/SU marriage never made a whole bunch of sense. Even StumbleUpon’s blog struggled to find anything that made sense to say about it. “We’re both driven by our community of users, and we are both dedicated to connecting people” seems a deeply woolly excuse to spend $75million, and I’d be tempted to see Meg’s shopaholic tendency behind the purchase.

No more. eBay are rationalising their relationships. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that eBay will be extending their classified ads business:

Jacob Aqraou, general manager of eBay’s global classified business, said he expects the company will take over a “fair” number of companies in the next six months or so. In an interview, Mr. Aqraou said lackluster economic growth and the deepening credit crunch have depressed prices for private companies to such a degree that it now makes more sense to buy established classifieds properties than build new services from scratch. He said eBay’s strategy was to target classified-ad sites that have leading positions in geographies and industry segments in which eBay doesn’t currently compete.

Classified ads are said to be eBay’s fastest growing unit. By using established sites to “fill in the gaps” in their current offerings - Aqraou mentions Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, where eBay’s hold is currently very weak - they can expand at minimal cost and with little risk.

eBayers can also expect to see closer ties between these classified sites and the main eBay marketplace: Auctionbytes reports that eBay sent emails to New York-based users last week, advertising their own free local classifieds site, Kijiji.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under News | 1 Comment 

UAE blocks Stumbleupon

July 6, 2008

Just a month after United Arab Emirates Internet provider du blocked Skype calls the only other ISP in the UAE, Etisalat appears to have blocked Stumbleupon.

I can remember when ISPs such as AOL and Compuserve attempted to control what content their users could access and both failed eventually allowing users full Internet Access. The UAE are one of the few places that still control what sites and content users can access.

Although Du have blocked Skype and Etisalat have blocked Stumbleupon it appears neither have blocked both applications.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under News | 2 Comments 

StumbleUpon is a winner

January 19, 2008

This post was written in January 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

eBay-owned social bookmarking site StumbleUpon won the award for best use of viral marketing at last nights Crunchies ceremony.

A collaborative project between GigaOm, Read/WriteWeb, VentureBeat and TechCrunch, the Crunchies celebrate the most compelling startups, internet and technology innovations of the year. Winners are chosen by public vote from the internet community.

Other notable winners were WordPress as most likely to succeed, Facebook as best overall, and Kongregate as best time sink site. If you ever want to do any work again, I strongly advise you not to click that last link.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under News | 7 Comments