StumbleUpon Acquired by eBay

A WebmasterWorld thread points to an official announcement on the eBay website about its recent acquisition: social search engine StumbleUpon.

From Bill Cobb, President of eBay North America:

Our intent is to support the growth and evolution of this community-based business, and StumbleUpon will run as a separate business unit within eBay Inc. Although there are no definite plans to share at this time, as the site evolves, we'll be exploring the possibilities for synergies between StumbleUpon and eBay marketplaces, Skype, and PayPal.

But this doesn't necessarily sit well with forum members who see this possible merge as a way of serving additional ads.

exploring == exploiting == ads, ads, ads, more ads, and ads

I guess this really is web 2.0 where the big get bigger.

Personally, I don't think so.

TechCrunch has more on the acquisition, saying that the product is not changing and the company itself is just adding an additional team member from eBay.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.