eBay in $75 million buy of search site StumbleUpon

31 May 2007

Web auction leader eBay Inc. has acquired web surfing recommendation site StumbleUpon for $75 million in cash, matching the highest value reported as under discussion weeks ago.

StumbleUpon Inc. is an online review site that recommends web pages within sites such as Flickr, MySpace or YouTube, based on "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" votes from other web users with shared interests. It counts 2.3 million users and is growing at 150 percent a year.

The service helps people find websites, videos, products, people and other online information according to their tastes. Community members add more than 5 million recommendations per day, meaning StumbleUpon's depth improves the more often it is used.

StumbleUpon combines peer recommendations with search features and as such presents an alternative to Web search leader Google Inc.. The recommendation features built into the service could serve as a referral system for eBay users to locate web auctions that interest them, analysts say.

EBay, based in San Jose, California, said it does not expect the StumbleUpon acquisition to have a material effect on its previously stated outlook for 2007 results. In April, the company had forecast full-year profit of $1.30 to $1.34 a share.

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