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Search - Wednesday, April 18, 2007

eBay Just Reports Great Q; May Be Acquiring Stumbleupon

TechCrunch and Gigaom are speculating that eBay is on the verge of acquiring tool bar company Stumbleupon for $40-50M. As it happens, eBay just reported a great quarter and Meg Whitman will be on CNBC and other channels where we might hear here discuss Stumbleupon if indeed that goes down.

StumbleUpon is a simple bar that suggests sites based on your surfing habits and how they compare to other StumbleUpon users. If indeed eBay bought Stumbleupon the reason would most likely be access to a rapidly growing user base. Users could Stumbleupon products for sale on eBay. Already the company embeds sponsor sites in some of its search results. With Stumbleupon's user base doubling large numbers so frequently $40M could become a cheap customer acquisition spend. We would also expect eBay to marry Stumbleupon with Skype.

Calgary-born, SF-based StumbleUpon had raised $2M in angel funding from Google board member Ram Shriram, and angels Ariel Poler, Mitch Kapor and Ron Conway.

eBay seems to have a spring back in its step. Today, its first-quarter profit surged 52%, helped by higher average selling price of goods sold and more growth at Paypal. Skype saw revenue more than double to $79M.

Read - Techcrunch post