Big Sale Coming to eBay?
by
on September 19, 2008,
Today we hear rumors that eBay is planning to sell StumbleUpon websites discovery tool after acquiring it for $75 million last May. And people immediately began speculating if eBay we only see the beginning of eBay selling some non-core assets to focus on the main line of business facing the possible huge 10% rumored layoffs. The next candidate for sale suggested is obviously Skype since it is in a very similar position in relation to eBay’s main business as StumbleUpon is.
Usually big internet companies buy smaller companies for one of two reasons (or both): 1) they want to use their tools or technologies within their larger products and/or 2) they want to make money off the acquired products leaving them independent.
Unfortunately for StumbleUpon, it was never clear how eBay was planning to use this product. I am personally a very heavy StumbleUpon user (join me here, by the way) and a big fan of the community there and the product itself. But it has always been hard to figure out what exactly eBay was planning to do with StumbleUpon after the acquisition. One idea could be to suggest some products and auctions on eBay based on user’s preferences and interests that can be easily figured out from StumbleUpon. But while this could be useful, StumbleUpon probably has not managed to gain enough traction to provide substantial volume of information for such purposes.
Speaking about making money off StumbleUpon itself, the websites discovery tool does sound like quite a healthy product as it draws a mix of advertising and subscription revenue. Advertisers here pay to have their pages pushed at users when they discover new sites while subscribers pay to be able to turn off sponsored pages and create new groups.
I have paid for a couple of years of sponsorship for myself ($20 a year) and bought quite a number of sponsorships as birthday gifts to some of my StumbleUpon friends. It always seemed to me that I saw quite a good number of icons marking users as sponsors on StumbleUpon. Besides, I feel that StumbleUpon is pretty good in attracting advertisers because of the number of sponsored pages there. But without actual figures it is hard to tell how healthy the business is - and the question still remains if such a business can be worth $75 million eBay paid for it last year. So it looks very much like eBay may actually consider selling StumbleUpon and rumors have some basis.
But come to think of it, Skype is also a side product for eBay. When eBay acquired the VoIP service for $4.2 billion, the online auctions company was supposed to integrate the service into its auctioning process for buyers and sellers to use it as a communication tool. But for some reason it never worked out and Skype remained more of a standalone product for eBay after the acquisition. eBay has already admitted that it paid about $1 billion too much for Skype and it does not generate enough revenue for the acquisition to be considered reasonable now.
It is obvious that there are companies in the market that could use Skype much more efficiently - Google could use the product for VoIP on Android, for example. And Google is one candidate buyer for Skype that also has the money needed for a large-scale acquisition like this. But such a purchase could only happen if eBay really intended to improve financial situation it is now in by selling some non-core assets. Yet for now we have not even heard any confirmation of StumbleUpon rumors but if eBay is really selling StumbleUpon, it could prove to be looking to sell some other things it does not really need as well and Skype could be the first suggestion.
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Opensource
Jay
Michael Fidler 
Poor feebay. Going broke fast. Unloading this ‘asset’ is not going to help their dire financial situation one bit. They have no one to blame other than themselves for having alienated their core user base with corporate greed and shoddy (to non existant) customer service. Woe is you feebay.
I currently sell on AlsoShop - http://www.alsoshop.com - amongst a host of other free auction site alternatives and have not looked back at the feebay beast ever since.
EBAYS PROBLEMS KEEP GROWING,
IF YOU search the ebay site for “no paypal” and click the little box to include item descriptions also, 6,567,890 hits come up!! thats SIX MILLION SELLERS WHO REFUSE PAYPAL!!! WHY, SIX MILLION SELLER WERE BURNED BY CLOSED ACCOUNT AND FRAUD,,,THAT WHY. IF YOU POST THIS INFOR ON THE EBAY SITE, YOU WILL GET THE BELOW MEASSAGE!!!
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@Jade: Too true, the reason for the problem is much deeper at eBay and loss of once loyal users looks like the most important one. Of course selling StumbleUpon (or even Skype) won’t help in the long run if they don’t realize a bigger change is needed in the auctions system itself.
Jade,
It does not matter how hard you try to spread bad words about ebay. I see that you are adding same comments to almost every article written about eBay on Internet. What is your problem? eBay user community hardly pays attention to what you say about the company.
Do you have any vested interests in alsoshop? You seem to be marketing the website. There are better ways if you want to attract users to this site. By the way, the site has less than 25,000 listings and only 190 users. On the other hand eBay has more than 10 million listings (and growing) and more than 200 million registered users. It would be a waste of time even to compare the two sites on other parameters.
By all means continue doing what you have been, but it is not going to affect eBay. After all it is world’s online marketplace and will remain so for years to come. It is good that you have stopped selling/buying on eBay. eBay does not need rotten eggs like you. Time is precious, so spend it wisely.
@Irel I guess you forgot when ebay only had 25,000 listings.
So in your opinion anyone who breaks the ebay chains that bind is a rotten egg? Yeah, ebay listings are growing. They have partnered with several large companies to kick the Mom and Pop sellers not only to the curb, but under the bus and run over them several times.
When ebay implemented its new feedback policies, feedback blackmail began running rampant. It was bad before, now its rampant. And what does ebay do… “We want buyers to have a positive experience.” So sellers can’t tell the rest of the community that the buyer is an extortionist.
And lets not forget the at least $100,000 million in legal fees.
Ebay is in trouble. THAT IS A FACT! Just because it has world wide name recognition… doesn’t change the fact that it is full of cheap designer fakes, unethical buyers and sellers, and is constantly raising fees without improving service for a true positive buying and selling experience. Just look at the businesses
Have you tried using the Live Help Customer NO Service lately?
AlsoShop’s statement says they aren’t trying to be the next ebay, or even want to be classed as an alternative to ebay. AlsoShop is offering an inexpensive place to trade. That pure and simple.
Companies are bought and sold all the time, merged and reorganized all the time. Too bad that ebay can’t regain some of it lost capitol from the Skype buy.
Yeah, ebay is still the 900# gorilla, but gorilla’s are on the endangered species list, As most of the big businesses are in trouble today, thru cooking books and overstating their worth and other bad decisions.
FACT for ya… Sellers are leaving ebay. They are joining other sites. They are making money off ebay. So bring on the rotten eggs!
left a sentence half finished.. Just look at the businesses who are gettign bailed out now for bad usiness decisions, over-valued stock, and cooked books.
Madison and Jade,
You both seem to be the same person since you are sending comments to this article from the same computer (IP address). What does this prove? I do not need to mention that.
If you are an honest seller on eBay you should not be worried about the latest changes such as negative feedback against buyers are not allowed. If you follow these simple rules you would be a winner on eBay -
Describe your item correctly
Answer bidder’s questions promptly
Ship item and that too on time
Give feedback about buyer honestly (in return you would also get appropriate feedback from buyer)
Many sites like Alsoshop have popped up, tried to compete with eBay for some time and vanished thereafter. I sincerely hope that your alsoshop does not follow the same path. Wish you good luck!
Irel, thank you for your reasonable comment here, you do have the valid points, especially that the changed rules won’t hurt you if you are willing to play by the rules at all. And all the sites trying to lure eBay users away will hardly live actually long enough to be considered seriously.
But actually as the blog moderator I see different IPs for Madison and Jade in the dashboard of the blog (even though they both start with the same two figures - but after those two figures they are different to me). Would you mind checking your emails for the new replies to you and if the IPs are actually the same forwarding them to me so that we could fix it if it is a bug. Thank you in advance!
Iral, how do you know I wasn’t a success at ebay? I chose to leave, a long time ago. Your advise is true of any online sales. However, that doesn’t stop the feedback extortion that has been happening since ebay’s new feedback rules. And if you believe the extortion isn’t happening, then you are either full of the ebay koolaid or live behind the ebay only rose colored glasses. Trust me, there is life after ebay. Different, life just the same.
My ebay account is still active and I can go back anything I chose, and I chose not to return.
AlsoShop isn’t trying to compete with ebay. There isn’t a competitor to ebay and probably never will be. Not every site has the ambition of being the next ebay. Some just want to offer a safe and fair trading environment. Ebay lost that.
Oh! BTW, have you tried to use ebay’s live help lately?
As for start up sites… check out http://www.kenzy.com... he has a fairly complete and very extensive list of auction sites, both live and dead. Some are very successful in their own right… they don’t try to be ebay. They are individual, and have survived for years and grew without much advertising. And sadly, just as many have closed. Some for the very reasons you mentioned. Mostly, because they either didn’t have funding, or too high expectations of themselves, or they allowed the opinions of others to cloud thier vision.
Svetlana, I didn’t receive an email. However, Jade and I are not the same person. The first set of digits of an ip address is part of the service provider, who is assigned a group of IPs. Part of the number is the account holder. DSL service is usually a static ip and dial-ups are random. Not always, but generally.
Madison, you only receive emails if you subscribe to comments to a post. And I know that the first set of digits is only for the provider, that’s why I mentioned you had different IPs with Jade, not similar.
Madison,
There are million of people around the world who still sell on eBay and will continue selling. They are not idiots.
Would you mind sharing your eBay account id? Let the world know about the feedback you have received from buyers. If you are honest you would post your id here.
Madison,
Where are you? Why aren’t you replying? Please post your eBay id (or ids if you have multiple) here.
It seems that Jade has lost interest. He has not replied since his first comment.