StumbleUpon Breaks Away From eBay

[engine]

StumbleUpon Breaks Away From eBay [kara.allthingsd.com]

The content discovery service, StumbleUpon, has gotten itself back to start-up status, after being bought by eBay two years ago.

It announced today that it was returning to being an “investor-backed startup” by a roster of well-known Silicon Valley investors, including Ram Shriram of Sherpalo Ventures, Accel Partners and August Capital.

Its founders, Garrett Camp and Geoff Smith are also back, with Camp now in place as CEO.

“We are grateful to eBay for its guidance. However, we realized there were few long-term synergies between the two businesses. It is best for us to part ways and focus on our respective strengths,” said Camp, stating the very obvious.

[gpilling]

Synergies? We don't need no stinkin' synergies!

[gibbergibber]

Ebay bought Skype with seemingly no concern for "synergies" either.

[nealrodriguez]

well they went from 2.6 million users at acquisition to about 7 million now; maybe camp thinks he could grow the site's user base faster if he takes utter creative control

[koan]

However, we realized there were few long-term synergies between the two businesses.

No doubt he's the boss. Next: hit on Debra, get rejected and swallow sadness.

[potentialgeek]

eBay's buy of PayPal was epic, but I never got the StumpleUpon idea.

How is Google's synergy with YouTube? ;/

[gpilling]

YouTube is the new search....

[aleksl]

youtube is the propaganda FLAGSHIP. TV was The Propaganda, before internet slowly took over for people who's got bain cells left in them. youtube is not new search, it's Google's promise to the Powers in control to bring propaganda back to the web. You can jam anything with video and sound into human brain, unlike the text version of the internet.

Watch monopolies try to get out of their ways each in attempt to bring "more bandwidth to the masses" - that is so they can jam videos down your throat filled with subliminal messages just like TV.

Oh, yeah, stumbleupon...right...

[JS_Harris]

Youtube isn't just the new search, it's hogging up the top of the old search indexes too.

Google has no "video" search button because they shove youtube right into regular serps... and it's annoying!

edit: After writing that I have to add that I don't recall ever seeing a youtube video ever rank lower than page one results. Does anyone know if Google links between natural page one rankings and Youtube accounts to ensure they don't give away too many spots on one page to the same entity?

[edited by: JS_Harris at 6:03 am (utc) on April 21, 2009]