What is Digg?81 Comments
- sockpuppets, on 10/11/2007, -2/+103Now all they need to buy is digg and I'll officially stop visiting teh internets.
- greenlant00, on 10/11/2007, -13/+87And another great product bits the dust. Too bad.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -4/+66Yea, look how unsuccessful they were with PayPal and Skype.
Oh, wait... - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -3/+47Their image is shot.....I wouldn't count on them improving it any time soon. They run their auction site like it's 1999 still. The current people in charge are just hoarding profits. They could care less about making customers happy.
- crackah, on 10/11/2007, -2/+44Wait a min... so ebay expect to make back 75 mil from this website?
- blackolive, on 10/11/2007, -5/+47I'm also worried. Ebay must be trying to spam their webpage with it somehow. What good could this do?
- corevette, on 10/11/2007, -4/+36but see...microsoft has at least some innovation in their products....
when ebay buys a company (e.g. paypal) they do nothing with it and leaving it to rot. i personally think they buy the companies to give public attention to ebay, not stumbleupon - tom6a, on 10/11/2007, -0/+27"Although you can imagine 'StumbleUpon Shopping' coming soon, eBay is leaving the company alone and taking a wait-and-see approach. The corporation will remain completely intact, except for the addition of eBay’s Michael Buhr, who will serve as general manager for the product."
Source: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/30/ebays-stumbleupon-acquisition-confirmed-at-75-million/ - resta6, on 01/12/2009, -0/+23the internet is consolidating, there are a few powerful companies, and they are buying everything in sight to get the eyeballs for their product. No problem, thats how capitalism works, but in the process they are ruining the "good" that these companies had before being acquired.
So with stumbleupon get ready to stumbleupon Ebay listings - consonance, on 10/11/2007, -3/+25Excuse me, but what the *****?
First Skype, now StumbleUpon... Can anyone tell me what kind of message eBay is trying to send to people? - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+19Just to answer your question of "wasn't it"...It wasn't. MySpace was sold for about $600 million.
- eplawless, on 10/11/2007, -7/+25I've had nothing but bad experiences with eBay.
***** eBay. Stumbleupon, I mourn your loss. - tomharding, on 10/11/2007, -1/+16I beg to differ. That 'damn' firefox extension is the only reason I use SU. When im bored *****, its pretty easy to just stumble.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -5/+18Excuse me, but what the *****?
First Keyhole, then YouTube and then DoubleClick and then Feedburner (to name a few)...Can anyone tell me what kind of message Google is trying to send to people? - zdiddy85, on 10/11/2007, -1/+12it's all money, money, money. no other motives, srry
- SomaSynth, on 10/11/2007, -0/+10I know, but it's convenient for me because I never used it anyways, just reminded me to uninstall it :)
- Nayr213, on 10/11/2007, -1/+9I hope you understand that your armchair activism does nothing.
- Toast1185, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7eBay is attempting to go for the world record for most nonsensical business acqusitions
- fuliginosus, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8 "Big corporation buying something =/= that thing will automatically turn 'bad'."
Big corporation buying something with big bucks means expectations to get big revenue. With this case it will most likely mean more and more commercial sites masked as user provided interesting sites because it will be shortest route to money. - Sabretou, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6C'mon, all this whining is just silly. Just because eBay bought StumbleUpon doesn't mean that StumbleUpon is going to be its apprentice in the shopping business. In fact, with better funds and facilities, StumbleUpon will be able to grow better, which is eventually good.
- lyncho99, on 10/11/2007, -3/+9Wow, what a fantastic form of protest, uninstalling a useful and interesting extension for your browser.
eBay is a successful, profitable web company. Do you think they will be stupid enough to alienate the StumbleUpon userbase (upon which the whole extension depends) just to make a few extra dollars a month? If anything, I think this move will be good for Stumble Upon, as eBay will want to do their utmost to increase the userbase, meaning that there will be more users, more content, more interesting sites.
Big corporation buying something =/= that thing will automatically turn 'bad'. - cielo23, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7Did they pay for it with PayPal?
- sdoodle, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6quit whining you babies! Skype & Paypal work fine on their own and have changed very little since ebay bought them, I see this as a good thing for SU, by being able to tap into ebay's membership base and internet reach, stumbleupon will grow that much quicker.
For ebay, this is a very smart move, they have bought a great 2.0 company for very little and will easily make back their 75mil within several years. Do you really think ebay or SU care about some crying digg users that claim they are uninstalling because ebay bought them??? Grow up! - jsowder18, on 10/11/2007, -4/+10learn English.
- EvaMonkey01, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5First Last.fm and now this... why is my internets being ruined?
- osarhan, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5right now i'm a bit worried that eBay are paying $75million for it, it works out at an average of $32.60 per user, according to that article.
- mindstyle1, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6StumbleUpon already has (and has had for awhile) an advertising platform
http://www.stumbleupon.com/ads/ - anillop, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5Nooooooooooooooo, well shoot there goes another awesome idea down the *****. I am sure in a months time every other stumble it going to take you to some ebay page with some crappy auction that I couldn't ever give a ***** about. I sure hope ebay just leaves stumbleupon alone and doesn't screw up a good thing.
- fac3less, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5Yes, and I myself have already pumped about 2,500+ usd into stumbleupon ads.
They'll get their money fairly quickly ;) - pbs1914, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Acquisitions like this, which have become quite common over the past year or two, are a result of the Internet's increasing maturity. Web 1.0 was about e-commerce and web presence for offline companies, with some notable exceptions. The latter had a natural means of revenue (and by that I mean that their purpose and their revenue stream were one in the same), and the former didn't necessarily need to acquire an online company to enhance/sustain it's business, though it could, such as Time-Warner (unfortunately, for them) acquiring AOL. The Bubble provided a cash-in strategy for investors & founders that allowed the company to maintain autonomy, namely the "we have no proven product but we're going public" IPO. Of course, because these most of these companies couldn't really exist on their own, most fizzled out and the Internet was left with a few big Web 1.0 survivors: eBay, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and a few others.
Most Web 2.0 companies, however, have created a product that many people find useful and/or enjoying (the ones we care about, at least), and have tried to monetize that product through advertising. Some sites have been more successful than others, but the fact remains that their options for growth are to increase traffic and increase the value proposition of their advertising. What's important to note here is that they are often relying on other companies/solutions to handle their advertising, and thus are largely subject to the constraints of the current solutions out there. One notable exception to the landscape I painted above was Google, who's purpose (search) and revenue (advertising) weren't the same, but they created their own solution for monetizing their product, and did such a good job at it in fact that doing it for other people became half their business and made them into one of the most powerful companies in the country.
The pennies these Web 2.0 companies are making from their advertising partners simply make a buy-out too attractive. And whereas there wasn't this landscape of mature, large web companies in 1.0, this type of acquisition is both an available and attractive option. StumbleUpon cashes in (and doesn't risk eBay building it's own version or eBay buying some competitor and crushing it) and eBay is able to monetize on StumbleUpon's network more effectively than it could itself. This is the case behind most of the acquisitions we've seen, whether it be eBay hoping (maybe) to drive listings with StumbleUpon, or Google hoping to find a way to sell ads effectively on YouTube in ways the company couldn't by itself.
So the fact is, yes, the StumbleUpon's of the world are now going to the bigger companies, which they weren't before. But the fact is, in the early days of the Internet, they probably would have had an IPO, signed a ridiculous office lease, gone on a hiring spree, and then crashed, and then they wouldn't be here at all. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -8/+12Yet the VAST majority of eBayusers are very happy. they have a very high customer satisfaction rate.
- superstewy, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Tons of money? What did eBay make last year? Billions? How much do they have in reserve? Multiple Billions? They just spent $75 millions, chump change. Spending that money has nothing to do with how well the actual eBay site is run. Anyway, just some thoughts.
- kefs, on 10/11/2007, -6/+9***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****
***** - sandyiit, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Just 75 . I hoped stumbleupon was a lot worthier.
Using for a year now and is really a nice cool thing to have which was gaining popularity. - slapthemonkey, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Do agree with sdoodle.
- Retype, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3i wonder if they had to bid for it ?
:) - hamid88, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2 As for the why, beyond the obvious financial motivation, it's exceedingly simple. Because they can
- fac3less, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3You moron.
Random stumbles are already advertisements:
You just don't know it because the stumbleupon folks make sure it doesn't look like an ad. - Njall, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3 Too bad. The ONLY reason I perceive that eBay would buy StumbleUpon is to spam me one way or another. There is no other fit that makes any sense. Along with cigarettes being good for health, any suggestion that eBay won't tamper with the service is a lie. I don't begrudge eBay an ounce of its success; however, I don't believe it is any more interested in my well being than the RIAA is. Goodbye StumbleUpon. Goodbye to interesting links without obvious commercial value. Hello to the [Find It on eBay] buttons. Goodbye to reasonably honest reviews. Hello to 'Get your Viagra' here links. Goodbye to fun, thoughtful stumbles expressing interesting and often divergent views. Hello to "As seen on FOX News". It was nice while it lasted.
- ThisIsBob, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2$32.00 a user? Skype me a Paypal. I'll register.
- orthodoxDrew, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2who bought last.fm?
- BGFeltenink, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2I'm guessing the XXX stuff on Stumble will be the first to go.
When they came for the wankers I did not speak, for I was not wanking at that moment... - Vandelay797, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3ebay is *****.
RIP Stumble - demnos, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2This really ticks me off. eBay hasn't really been providing anything for it's users as of late but they keep on raising the prices to sell stuff on their site. Rather than using the sellers fees to improve the eBay site they are spending tons of money on acquiring other companies that really don't help eBay much at all. PayPal was a smart move for sure, Skype was questionable, and this is just stupid. I say that they should improve their core site first before wasting money on stuff that they will most likely just ruin. Anyway, just some thoughts.
- Rekzai, on 10/11/2007, -1/+31. Make cool social website
2. ????
3. Sell to bigger company
4. PROFIT !!!!! - dashoot, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2I could see ebay having two different platforms one platforms stumbles external websites like the minute, the other platform which just stumble ebay pages which would be cool. You just go through random pages of random things which are for sale which just means you spend more money on random crap which you don't need.
Ps
The problem with ebay, is that everything is separate like paypal, skype, stumbleupon what they need is to have it all on one site all linked together. Like the old days of google before they ***** up the magic formula and now have separate companies and separate products. - indyhouse, on 10/11/2007, -2/+4It's official: StumbleUpon has now been uninstalled from all my computers.
- GawtMilk, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2StumbleUpon is an amazing source of fun, yet a terrible source of revenue. I know they're going to start injecting more ads into the loop. I already hate it when that happens, and it's currently only one or two every hundred pages. I use stumble upon a lot. If I'm looking for inspiration for designs, I never use Google, I always Stumble. But why does eBay think that will help them?
- lordbeef, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2You really think eBay is going to drastically change stumbleupon?
If you look at their previous acquisitions, eBay's strategy has been "you guys keep all of your jobs, we'll add a link or two to you from our web site, just leave a bag of cash at our doorstep every month and we'll leave you alone" -
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