They’re baaaack. The rumours about eBay buying StumbleUpon have resurfaced, but this time it’s the Wall Street Journal that is breathing new life into the story — a tale that was sparked first by TechCrunch back in April. At that point, the site — which was created by Garrett Camp and two university friends in Calgary — was rumoured to have talked with Google and Yahoo as well as eBay, and the price was said to be in the $45-million range. Now, according to the WSJ, it’s more like $75-million. Not bad for a site that has 2 million users.
Does it make sense for eBay? When the rumours first surfaced I wrote a post saying that I didn’t get it, and I still don’t. Muhammad Saleem at ProNet and Pete Cashmore at Mashable wrote about how they could see it working, but I still don’t buy it. Maybe eBay has some kind of grand vision that I’m not seeing — or maybe it’s just desperate for growth of any kind. Scot Wingo at eBay Strategies has some more thoughts on it, and Valleywag says the only explanation is that eBay just has way too much money on its hands from its online auction monopoly.