EBay Acquires Online Search Site StumbleUpon
Earlier last month EBay Inc. announced recently that it acquired StumbleUpon Inc., a software startup that suggests Web sites based on reader reviews and personal preferences of its members.
StumbleUpon (a Canadian based company) was acquired for $75 million by eBay.
This is pretty big news and a sizeable purchase for eBay, although definitely not its biggest (StubHub was $310 mil, Skype $4bil!).
StumbleUpon is some pretty nifty code. With a user base of 2.48 million it had/has grown quickly since being started by 3 Canadian entrepeneurs in 2001. They moved to Silicon Valley with some Venture Capital behind them and caught eBay’s eye.
So what does eBay want with StumbleUpon?
Well, StumbleUpon is a nice tool. Essentially, it relates demographic data from you and people who like similar sites to you to provide relevant search matches.
It really amounts to guesswork at the moment as to eBay’s intentions with StumbleUpon. My bet is some sort of integration of the relevance and search criteria from the StumbleUopn engine in eBay search but as Scott Wingo points out, this may be difficult to do given the fast changing nature of eBay’s auctions and sellers.
StumbleUopn works well for sites and static content where a ranking or preference submitted by a user is consistent with that site content, as the site does not change overly much with time. Applying the same methodology to eBay sellers and auctions (although in an ideal world a great addition to the current still flawed feedback/quality ratings system) would be difficult to implement.
I couldn’t agree more.
As to whether eBay is positioning itself to enter the search market, where even a small share would be profitable, well, guesswork again.
220 million registered eBay users, some sharp relevance searching from StumbleUpon and a growing database of Skype users could be a good foot in the door though…
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