19 April 2007

eBay look for StumbleUpon acquisition

Online auction giant eBay are reported to be interested in acquiring website rating system StumbleUpon.

Techcrunch's blog, citing an unnamed source, claims that eBay is already holding talks over the possible purchase and it is estimated that the total cost of the acquisition could be around $40 to $75 million.

StumbleUpon offers users the ability to rate websites using a special browser toolbar. There is also the option for surfers to be automatically taken to other highly rated sites based on the results of other Stumble users.

The StumbleUpon site claims that it currently has around 2.1 million users compared to 1.7 million at the end of last year, with over four million sites rated each day. The recent growth has been linked to the company's expansion into video content.

StumbleUpon could be useful because its toolbar links to sponsored sites in some of its search results. This could provide better returns for advertisers because users do not have to click on a banner or link to visit the sponsor's site.

It has also been suggested that eBay may be interested in enquiring a toolbar operation in order to compete with the popular Google interface.

However, eBay may not be the only interested party and is expected that both Google and AOL could be keen to acquire the Canadian-based enterprise.

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