online.wsj.com/article/...247556996692.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
By VAUHINI VARA and KEVIN J. DELANEY
May 9, 2007; Page B14
EBay Inc. is in advanced talks to acquire StumbleUpon Inc., an Internet company that helps people discover Web pages that match their interests, according to people familiar with the matter.
The potential price for a deal is in the range of $75 million, these people say. One of the people said that no final agreement has been reached and the talks could fall apart. An eBay spokesman said the company doesn't comment on "rumors or speculation."
Still, eBay's interest in the closely held San Francisco company is the latest sign of its efforts to expand beyond its maturing online-auction business through acquisitions. For instance, the company in February paid $292.4 million for online-tickets seller StubHub Inc. EBay expects that business to generate revenue of $105 million to $120 million in 2007.
Meg Whitman, eBay's chief executive, said in an interview in April that the company would consider redeploying cash from its established businesses into such transactions. "To the extent that we feel acquisitions are strategically on target for eBay -- if they're priced right, and we think we can find synergies and add value -- we'll do those acquisitions," she said.
The Web publication TechCrunch last month reported the possibility that eBay would buy StumbleUpon.
StumbleUpon, founded in 2001 in Calgary, Canada, lets Internet surfers flag interesting Web pages and recommends those to others based on their interests. The company in April launched a feature called StumbleThru, which lets users "stumble" within specific sites such as Flickr, MySpace, Wikipedia and YouTube to share opinions on the quality of articles, pages, photos and so on. That feature could be especially useful for eBay, by letting it make personalized recommendations of auction pages for, say, clothing or electronics -- which could in turn encourage visitors to buy more items on eBay.
The company's three Canadian co-founders funded its growth themselves until March 2006, then took funding from a handful of angel investors, including Google Inc. director Ram Shriram and Lotus Development Corp. founder Mitch Kapor.
Write to Vauhini Vara at vauhini.vara@wsj.com and Kevin J. Delaney at kevin.delaney@wsj.com
