StumbleUpon the website review company that was bought out by eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) for $75 million released a new feature earlier tonight.  StumbleUpon is especially known for their toolbar where users can Stumble to any random websites, review any website that they have visited, add friends, and add favorite sites.  Tonight StumbleUpon is releasing a toolbar that is web-based and doesn’t require a browser plugin. 

Initiating the web-based toolbar requires the user to start from the StumbleUpon homepage.  The homepage contains several categories where users can check out as a starting point for stumbling sites.  When the user leaves, the web-based toolbar will follow.  The StumbleUpon team has been playing around with the idea of a web-based toolbar over the last 6 years. 

StumbleUpon is also releasing a widget that allows publishers to show-off how many times that users have hit “I like it” for their individual blog posts or news stories in a counter form.  The widget would also allow users to view other related content on the counter.

StumbleUpon was founded by Garrett Camp.  StumbleUpon receives 35,000 new URLs submitted per day across 6 million users.  When asked if eBay is considering selling off StumbleUpon, Camp stated that he cannot respond to rumors.

eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) is rumored to have hired Deutsche Bank to find a buyer to sell off StumbleUpon, the social bookmarking site that they acquired for $75 million.  This rumor was started by a source of TechCrunch.  The price for selling off StumbleUpon is unknown.  I think it is still a mystery for why eBay bought the company in the first place.  What would eBay do with a social bookmarking site? 

As far as traffic measurements go, StumbleUpon had about 1.3 million global visitors and 25 million pageviews this past July.  About a year earlier, the site was bringing in 4.4 million global visitors and 31 million pageviews according to Comscore.  The number of registered users have gone up from 5 million to 6 million in the last 5 months.  StumbleUpon is growing at a moderate pace.  The more registered users, the more your valuation goes up.  I wouldn’t be surprised if eBay was able to resell StumbleUpon for what they paid. 

I’m estimating that Digg has about 3 million registered based on the fact that they had about 1 million users one month ago and their current growth rate.  And they were looking for an acquisition price somewhere north of $200 million.  It was rumored that they were in talks with Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), but it didn’t work out.

Lately it seems like eBay is barking up a lot of the wrong trees.  eBay is expected to have massive lay-offs.  They are fighting with Craigslist and several fashion designer companies in a legal battle.  A lot of their sellers are leaving due to the fixed-price model shift.  eBay is even having cognitive dissonance about their purchase of Skype. 

Two of the best acquisition deals that eBay made thus far was PayPal and StubHub.  There is actual synergy there.  PayPal runs the whole payment system around eBay auctions.  And StubHub is going to bank when selling the PSLs for the New York Jets.

“StumbleUpon[1] is a great fit within our goal of pioneering new communities based on commerce and sustained by trust,” stated Michael Buhr, a senior director at eBay Inc.[2] “StumbleUpon’s downloadable toolbar provides an engaging and unique experience to its users, but it is the similarities in our approaches to the concept of community that make it such a compelling addition to eBay[3].” Yesterday, eBay announced that the company would acquire StumbleUpon for $75 million.

StumbleUpon has roughly 2.3 million users and is known for the social network that revolves around the toolbar. The StumbleUpon community grew 150% and makes 5 million recommendations every day.

“We’re excited about joining eBay, as we share the same values around community and we look forward to working with them to accelerate our growth,” stated Garrett Camp, a StumbleUpon founder. Michael Buhr will now be serving as a general manager for StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon was formed in 2001 and is based in San Francisco. The other two founders of StumbleUpon include Geoff Smith and Justin LaFrance.

For those who do not understand how StumbleUpon works, the below screen shot should explain it:

Image credit[4]

[1] StumbleUpon.com
[2] eBay.com
[3] Business Wire: eBay Acquires StumbleUpon
[4] StumbleUpon >> Technology

eBay Inc. and StumbleUpon Inc. have resumed talks for an acquisition once again. I wrote about this matter earlier and underestimated the dollar amount involved. Before I believed that the amount was to be at $40-$45 million, but the Wall Street Journal reported that the amount is expected to be at $75 million.

Nothing is confirmed yet. Everything is just speculation right now.

StumbleUpon started up in 2001 in Calgary, Canada and has a toolbar that allows users to find relevant content based on interests and web surfing habits. StumbleUpon was founded by three people and was funded by Ram Shriram and Mitch Kapor.

StumbleUpon badges can be found on popular blogs and news websites including Pulse 2.0. StumbleUpon also acts as a social network that suggests friends. On April 19, StumbleUpon unleashed a feature called StumbleThru that allows users to allows users to find recommended content from particular domains such as Wikipedia, Flickr, and MySpace. The StumbleThru feature was announced on the StumbleUpon blog.

StumbleUpon announced that they crossed 2 million users in March. TechCrunch broke the initial acquisition possibility.

StumbleUpon is rumored to be in talks of an acquisition with eBay.  According to both GigaOm and TechCrunch, Google and AOL are other potential suitors as well.  The amount is rumored to be $40-45 million. 

Stumble Upon has a toolbar where users can rate various websites.  StumbleUpon badges appear are seen on blogs and other websites including Pulse 2.0 at the bottom of every post.  Essentially it is a website recommendation system.

StumbleUpon has 2.1 million users and has raised a previous $1.5 million in funding.