Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Garrett Camp

Garrett Camp Steps Down As StumbleUpon CEO

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 09 May 2012 18:58:41 +0000

StumbleUpon co-founder and CEO Garrett Camp has stepped down from the company. He will remain as Chairman of the board though. StumbleUpon is now looking for a new CEO. Camp has been CEO of StumbleUpon for 10 years since he created it as a grad student. He was CEO when eBay bought the company for $75 million and when he bought it back with several investors. StumbleUpon has 25 million registered users. “It was my first job and my first love,” said Camp. Camp also founded an on-demand ride service called Uber and he is chairman there as well.

Car Request Servicer Uber Raises $32 Million From Menlo Ventures, Benchmark, Goldman Sachs, and Jeff Bezos

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:04:51 +0000

Uber is a private car service company that has raised $32 million in Series B funding from Menlo Ventures, Goldman Sachs, and Jeff Bezos. Previous investor Benchmark Capital also participated in this round.

Uber was founded by Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp. Kalanick previously founded a company called Red Swoosh that he sold to Akamai for $19 million. Garrett Camp is also the founder and CEO of StumbleUpon.

Kalanick made the funding announcement at Le Web on stage. They launched their European operations in Paris today. currently they have 60 cars on the street and they are seeing heavy demand. The company plans on using the funding to expand to two cities per month.

[TechCrunch]

StumbleUpon Overhauls Design With More Of A Focus On Brands

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 23:23:28 +0000

StumbleUpon, the Internet discovery toolbar company that recently hit 20 million users, has overhauled their design entirely. StumbleUpon users can now feed them information from specific brands like Audi, FunnyOrDie.com, AOL, Disney, ESPN, etc. StumbleUpon users can also subscribe specifically to celebrities like Tom Hanks and Magic Johnson.

StumbleUpon has an “explore” option to make content easier to find with a quick search. StumbleUpon redesigned their logo, which is now reddish-orange instead of blue and green.

“People are still going to experience serendipity and surprise on StumbleUpon, but they now they are going to have more control,” stated StumbleUpon CEO and co-founder Garrett Camp.

StumbleUpon launched almost a decade ago in Canada before Camp moved to Silicon Valley in 2006. Then StumbleUpon sold to eBay for $75 million. eBay was not doing much with StumbleUpon so Camp teamed up with venture capitalists to buy it back in 2009.

StumbleUpon currently recommends about 1.2 billion websites and videos per month. This is more than double its volume from a year ago.

[Huffington Post]

Former Yahoo! CTO and EVP Of Products Ari Balogh Joins StumbleUpon

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 17 May 2011 03:38:53 +0000

Ari Balogh is the former CTO and EVP of Products at Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO). Now he is bringing his experience at a major Internet media company to Internet toolbar company StumbleUpon.com as the VP of engineering. He will have a major focus on the “recommendation technology” at StumbleUpon. Balogh will also be extending StumbleUpon’s development of the open-source Hadoop database HBase. Balogh will report to StumbleUpon CEO Garrett Camp. StumbleUpon has 15 million monthly users and hits one billion recommendations per month. StumbleUpon recently raised $17 million in funding after they spun out of eBay in 2009. eBay acquired StumbleUpon for $75 million in cash in 2007. [AllThingsD]

Uber Raises $11 Million For Booking Black Car Services On-The-Go

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 22:36:16 +0000

Uber is a company that was founded by StumbleUpon founder Garrett Camp. The company has raised $11 million in a round of funding that gives them a $49 million pre-money and $60 million post-money valuation. Benchmark Capital led the round and Sequoia Capital partner Alfred Lin participated as an individual. Benchmark partner Bill Gurley will be joining the board of directors.

Uber is a company where you can rent a private car service instead of using a cab. It costs about 50% higher than a cab. Camp does not own a car so he wanted to use private cars but not incur the cost of having a dedicated car. You ask for a black car to come get you through the mobile app and you can track it via GPS. Payments are automatically charged through the card you have on file. Since launching last summer in San Francisco, thousands of people have used the service.

StumbleUpon Launching Pro Version and Is Growing 700,000 Users Per Month

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 08:48:52 +0000

StumbleUpon CEO Garrett Camp took some time off to report some of their plans to the media. Camp said that StumbleUpon is growing 700,000 new users per month. Currently they have over 12 million users.

Camp said that they are revamping their ad buying platform that will appeal to more agencies and buyers by selling demographic and geographic targeting data. StumbleUpon has about 60 employs and has applications for the iPad, iPhone, and Android.

StumbleUpon’s Android application lets you discover Android apps and this is doing very well. The company hopes to have a “Stumble” button available on TVs, buttons, the desktop, video game consoles, etc.

Next year StumbleUpon plans to launch as “Pro” version. This allows brands and users to curate their own content and suggest content to reach larger audiences. The Pro accounts will be distinguished similar to how Twitter has a “Verified” badge.

[Mashable]

StumbleUpon Releases iPhone and Android Application

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 21:54:43 +0000

StumbleUpon is now available on the iPhone. I’ve tested it out and it works great. You can respond to messages, thumb up, thumb down, stumble, and visit your personal homepage through the application. You can also share and write reviews on stumbled websites. You can also Stumble by category and website type.

The StumbleUpon application has your friends in a directory. By visiting your friend’s profile on the mobile app, you can see their favorites.

You can download the Stumble iPhone app here [iTunes link] and the Android app from an Android-powered phone.

“Following the success of our iPad app, we’re excited to extend the stumbling experience to iPhone and Android device users, letting people explore the best of the web at any time no matter where they are,” stated StumbleUpon founder and CEO Garrett Camp. “Downloading the app is easy and once logged-in, users can discover great online content that’s tailored to their preferences.”

Melinda Chung and Katie Gray Join StumbleUpon’s Marketing Team From Yahoo! and Google

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 17:31:09 +0000

StumbleUpon has hired Melinda Chung as the company Product Marketing Manager and Katie Gray as the Marketing Communications Manager. Both Melinda and Katie will focus on growing StumbleUpon’s external communications base.

“We are thrilled to welcome Melinda and Katie on board,” stated StumbleUpon founder and CEO Garrett Camp. “Their extensive experience with product marketing, research and strategy will be a great asset to StumbleUpon as we continue to grow the company.”

Chung was most recently the Senior Product Marketing Manager at Yahoo! She also previously worked at Microsoft Live Search and QuinStreet. Gray joined StumbleUpon from Google where she worked at the AdWords division as the strategic marketing and analytics programs for advertisers.

StumbleUpon Is Offering $10,000 To Help Them Find A Good PHP Architect

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:02:36 +0000

StumbleUpon founder Garrett Camp just sent out a tweet that said “Do you know a rockstar PHP architect? We are now offering a $10,000 referral bonus for this position at StumbleUpon!” StumbleUpon is based in San Francisco, California. Below is some of the credentials that they are looking for:
* PHP expert with strong LAMP stack experience.
* BS in computer science or related field.
* 5+ years experience designing and building commercial internet applications.
* Experience building large-scale web-applications.
* Experience with Javascript and SQL.
* Experience using Memcache in large scale production environments.
* Experience working in small development teams within large-scale operations environments.
* Familiarity with StumbleUpon.

The official application page is located here: http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2xATta/stumbleupon.com/jobs/#PHP%20Architect. Check out our previous StumbleUpon coverage here: pulse2.com/category/stumbleupon.

StumbleUpon Users Get A New Homepage With Focus On Search and News Feed

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 01:44:28 +0000

Oh, hello there new StumbleUpon design. This past April, StumbleUpon had spun-off from their parent company eBay and has been improving upon the service ever since. The company improved their web toolbar and created a new analytics service called Su.pr.

Now the social media toolbar company has launched a new user interface that is “somewhere between a Twitter and Google” according to StumbleUpon co-founder Garrett Camp. StumbleUpon has about 8 million users that have stumbled about 35 million websites. All of these stumbled websites have now been indexed and StumbleUpon is tracking how many hits have been sent to them. The homepage for StumbleUpon users shows the recent activity for themselves and their friends.

StumbleUpon search results can be sorted by friends and by your own stumbles. The Discover tab allows users to sort recent stumbles by top rated, stumbles from friends, most shared, or by the topic. The toolbar itself will be updated later this week which will have the new features integrated. The toolbar will also have a new feature which will allow users to share links on Twitter and Facebook.

Below is a screenshot of the new user homepage: