Discussions of eBay’s $75 million StumbleUpon Bid
So there’s been a lot of news about StumbleUpon being acquired by eBay, including a Wall Street Journal (Subscription required).
First, a recap of some of the major theories:
GigaOM had the first feasible argument: “By marrying the toolbar to Skype client, eBay can do an end run around Google’s dominance of the search business. ”
Valleywag claims that it’s basically a random purchase: “Ebay has more money, from its outrageous monopoly on online collectibles and other auctions, than sense.”
eBay Strategies presents a detailed analysis of the situation and believes that eBay may be looking at a long term angle to getting into the search business that will sidestep Google. If not, at least they’ll have a powerful recommendation engine for eBay.
My thoughts? eBay is acquiring it as a defensive measure.
I don’t think StumbleUpon and eBay can directly integrate, although I can easily see the StumbleThru feature recently introduced as working on the eBay domain - this wouldn’t require a buyout though. Frankly, SU is mainly an entertainment, and not a product-purchasing tool, and converting users into buyers will be a difficult task.
I do think eBay considered how powerful of an asset Google would have if they bought it out, and so part of the value of the purchase is in a defensive measure. Google could easily integrate Stumble into it’s toolbar (what it half-assed with the dice) and reach millions more users, receive direct feedback on websites, as well as acquire a strong social network. eBay already feels threatened with Google Checkout (competing against PayPal) and Google checkout products (against eBay) - they don’t want to give Google more ammunition.
And eBay strategies has a valid point - if they can build a recommendation engine on eBay with StumbleUpon-level relevancy, it could easily increase sales and mean massive profit boosts. Could eBay be considering entering the search with SU? Doubtful, unless it plans to buy out Ask.com or Live and integrating the two - StumbleUpon is NOT a search engine, its primary purpose and use is entertainment.
Thoughts?
hiutopor
wrote @ 1:57 am on September 18, 2007:Hi all!
Very interesting information! Thanks!
Bye