By Stevie Smith May 9, 2007, 15:07 GMT
In a week that’s already seen rumours of News Corp.’s MySpace positioning itself for a potential $250 million USD buyout of leading photo-share Web site Photobucket, further whispers are floating through the Internet grapevine suggesting that online auction giant eBay is mulling over a possible acquisition of Web surfing review site StumbleUpon.
More pointedly, a ‘source’ familiar with the ongoing talks that are presently being held between eBay and StumbleUpon, suggests a deal worth around $75 million USD is in the pipeline and could emerge officially in the next few weeks. However, the unnamed source (much like the one linked with the MySpace-Photobucket rumour) also claims that discussions of a possible deal are still tentative at this stage and could certainly collapse.
For those not in the know regarding the relevance of StumbleUpon and its 2.3 million users, it operates similarly to Digg.com in that it recommends pages of note on Web sites including photo-sharing service Flickr, News Corp.’s MySpace, and Google’s YouTube based on ‘thumbs up’ and ‘thumbs down’ votes gathered from the feedback of other Web surfers. In terms of any possible deal with eBay, it is believed that StumbleUpon’s social review function and its integrated search features could provide a viable alternative to eBay users beyond the obvious draw of Google, with StumbleUpon’s central recommendation element allowing its users to quickly find referred Web-based auctions of interest.
The deal, although currently little more than online chatter and speculation, certainly could prove to be a future development for the tech industry – especially as both parties concerned have not denied the deal’s existence, but have also refused to issue comment. A Reuters news agency article reports that Garret Camp, StumbleUpon’s head software engineer, merely stated: “I really don’t want to comment,” when quizzed about the deal, while eBay spokesperson Catherine England chose to take up the stock standard: “We don’t comment on rumours and speculation” standpoint regarding the matter.
However, despite the reticence of both StumbleUpon and eBay to divulge any confirmed information, this week’s uncovering isn’t the first time that talk of a possible deal has arisen, with more than one tech-based blog having already reported it as a $40-75 million USD possibility back in April of this year.
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