Dude. What is wrong with the executives over at eBay? They just bought StumbleUpon.
I classify this in the same business “smart-ness” as the Skype buyout from a few years ago (a total waste of $2.6 billion).
eBay saw something cool with lots of traffic and decided to buy it. Just because it has money doesn’t mean you should buy it. You don’t see General Motors buying out 7-Eleven, and you never will. When people from a completely different industry with no expertise in your business model suddenly are in charge, shit starts to hit the fan.
What does eBay have to gain from Stumble? Traffic. But it’s not the kind of traffic that benefits eBay. People who Stumble are looking for interesting reads, funny pictures, cool videos, or anything else to waste time. It’s not about shopping, it’s not about auctions, and it’s certainly not targeted enough to be efficiently used to point visitors to eBay auctions.
What does StumbleUpon have to gain from this buyout? Pretty much nothing. If I was an investor, I would flee (sell my shares). The only “good” eBay will bring is stumbles to their auctions. Wait, that’s not good at all. Stumble is an entertainment site, whereas eBay is an eCommerce site. The eBay executives obviously know this difference, but I believe they are overestimating the ease of converting this traffic into revenue.
“Oh, you voted up the Wii article so you must want to see Wii auctions!” I really hope that’s not where Stumble ends up, because I’d seriously stop using it. Stumble is about anonymous voting that lets the quality float to the top. The only time you’d ever see an eBay auction is when it’s a gag auction that everybody can laugh at.
StumbleUpon is a service that helps people waste time. You click a button and it sends you to a random website. People that see these web sites vote them up. This makes subsequent “stumbles” better targeted and of higher quality content. The whole thing is far more addictive than it sounds. And, currently, the quality of the stumbles are awesome. They make money by letting advertisers purchase traffic, but it is done discretely, and the advertisers are filtered to ensure quality.
Over all, this is one of those deals where a company got bought out so that its new owner can accidentally smother it.
try reading the full article next time before you post a whole “i know whats going on” rant about something.
Actually, you’ve got nothing but RUMORS of TALKS that have been DENIED every step of the way. Soooooooo no?
It could be great if they gave you an ‘Ebay Stumble’ button on the toolbar, and you got to stumble auctions relevant to your interests – ONLY if it was in addition to the main Stumble button.
Arrived via Stumble 😉
I agree with Will also, It would be kinda cool to have an “Auction” button, I’d look just so I could see all the nostalgia 🙂
Yes, this article is being stumbled…
is this post being stumbled or something? what’s with the huge amount of comments??
David Dasso…shut up and go read the wallstreet journal
i compltely agree with everything you said above, except that this hasn’t happened yet…
hopefully it will never happen because, eBay has nothing to gain, Google on the other hand, they could learn alot, and Stumbleupon could become a very good combination to the Google Toolbar, both of which i use on an hourly basis.
so here’s to no eBay, and maybe Google.
Ok… except that they haven’t bought stumbleupon yet. Learn to read, people… ebay is in talks. That means shit all until it actually goes through.
I’m sure they bought StumbleUpon more for the revenue it can create, alongside the having it to model a future feature to integrate into their mainstay.
You can pay SU .05 per visitor that the system sends your way. They snatched it up before it has really taken off.
I know, it was a joke. That doesn’t stop web 2.0 developers from believing it though.
Good points, Will. Except that last part… that’s how web 1.0 went bust. 😉
I don’t think Ebay bought stumbleupon to send traffic to it’s auctions at all. The purchases of skype and stumbleupon clearly show that Ebay wants to move away from its reliance on Ecommerce, it’s core business.
What’s more likely though, is that Ebay wants it’s users to be able to stumble auctions (similar to stumbleupon, but a separate service for auctions only). When people first get onto Ebay, they get addicted and love looking at random auctions, if Ebay could highly personalize the auctions people see then they are going to increase bids dramatically. Obviously it was easier for them to buy the existing technology than to produce it themselves (which is probably due to a time constraint rather than anything else).
40 million is small fries anyway, no big deal if it doesn’t play out. Stumbleupon isn’t going any where any time soon, if they just keep on doing what they are doing users are going to increase and ebay will find some way to monterize the site. As the say in web 2.0, you worry about users first then making revenue.
Rod: I believe if there is a “smart” reason for the purchase, it has to do with stumbling into desired auctions. For tens of millions of dollars, I believe eBay could develop their own stumbling technology (it’s pretty simple stuff). Thus, this was about the user base, not the technology.
Addison: I fully disagree that eBay is the one who can monetize Stumble traffic since they are a conversion based web site (people have to actually spend money). I suspect many of Stumble’s most lucrative advertising deals are for web presence, branding, and other non-sales based advertising. Stumble may have uninvasive advertising, but it doesn’t change the fact that eBay can’t monetize it. It would be like eBay buying Digg because it has users. It doesn’t work. You can’t game a community based application to convert into hard sales unless that community was already intersted in your products.
Ebay bought stumble to integrate into their auction site about as mch as they bought Skype to get people to talk to their friends about their favorite auctions. According to the majority of users, the stumble model gives more attractive results then, say, Google- one of Ebays competitors and a rival bidder on the stumble buyout. Also, the advertising model they use is not only less invasive, but more effective at getting clickthroughs. Both of those advantages seem like a very huge deal to a big company that has the power to capitalize on them. . . like Ebay.
IMHO they’re thinking they bought quality IP to enhance eBay search with a discovery service. Deploy stumbleupon tech internally, keep the current service running separately, g2g.
Excellent point, David. God, what ARE they thinking…
There are other sites that have toolbars that are more valuable. Congoo’s toolbar gives free access to Wall Street Journal, Googles toolbar has google results. This stumble toolbar has zero value!