Not a Stumble – eBay to Acquire StumbleUpon
In yet another social media acquisition move, eBay has announced today that they’re acquiring StumbleUpon for approximately $75 million.
This closely follows Fox Interactive Media’s acquisition of Photobucket and Flektor along with CBS Interactive’s purchase of Wallstrip.com and fm.com. If you recall, Google has purchased YouTube while MySpace is already owned by Fox. Yahoo! has been buying social media types of sites for quite some time now, what with their earlier purchases of Flickr, del.icio.us, and such.
All the exuberance and hefty valuations seem to smack a bit of the over-valuation and acquisition craze just prior to the dot-bomb i-apocolypse. Purchasing a social media web 2.0 site or two just seems so trendy at the moment. These sites have some undeniable amounts of traffic and associated marketshare, but won’t there eventually have to be a bit of fallout? Won’t users eventually migrate over to a primary dominator in any given type of site?
Part of the longterm viability is dependent upon these cool startups being able to maintain their market share and continue to support their dedicated communities. Folding a small company up into a larger one is risky for maintaining the creators’ drive and vision, though. Yahoo has managed to do it with some of their properties like Flickr, but will others be as good at supporting the vibrant new minds they’re absorbing? I’m afraid that for some of these innovators, getting sucked up into a megacorporation is going to seem rather like getting forcibly absorbed into the borg.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 05/30/2007
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Filed under: General, News eBay, Mergers-&-Acquisitions, Social-Media, StumbleUpon
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