So Much for That: EBay Looks To Sell StumbleUpon 16 comments
-
Font Size:
-
Print
- TweetThis
In May 2007 eBay acquired website recommendation engine StumbleUpon for $75 million. Now, less than a year and a half later, they’re trying to unload it according to a source with knowledge of the sale process.
eBay has hired Deutsche Bank to find the right buyer, says our source, but the asking price is unknown. It’s not certain that eBay will be able to sell it for the price they paid - In July StumbleUpon had 1.3 million worldwide visitors and 25 million page views. Twelve months earlier the service attracted 4.4 million visitors and 31 million page views (Comscore). Google trends shows stagnation over the last year as well.
Registered users have continued to rise steadily, however. The service had 5 million in April 2008. As of this evening, the site shows 6,003,763, a 20% rise in less than 5 months.
Related Articles
|
-
The Seeking Alpha 100
See allThe top 100 stock
market authors
selected for publication
Seeking Alpha 100 » -
Fastest Climbers
Authors with the largestSee all
increase in followers
in the last 7 days
Fastest Climbers » -
Top Commenters
Top commenters,See all
as ranked by their peers
Top Commenters » -
Top Instabloggers
The 100 most active
Instabloggers.-
1
TraderMark
-
2
Don Dion
-
3
Cliff Wachtel
-
4
Mike Havrilla
-
5
James Quinn
Top Instabloggers » -
1
-
Top StockTalkers
TopSee all
StockTalkers.
Top StockTalkers »
This article has 16 comments:
Everyone knows the "listings" metric is completely irrelevant now with the new FP30 listing type. Please, give me a break.
Yes we can all see the future eBay community - it's a desert where no one lives, no one visits, and nothing grows because conditions are so bad. Seller confidence? You're kidding.
With the new changes that are made to eBay "DAILY" there is no more future for our so called Auction community of Noise makers. Seller & Buyers confidence is at a all time LOW!!! and listings are padded up to 100% from shady back door dealings.You may not listen to me as I am nothing more than just another loud mouth 12 year "CORE" mom & pop seller.However NOW you will have to listen to Wall Street.Remember the ROMANS?
And for what? Cheap imports or big box little box items you can buy at The Dollar Tree, Walmart, or Target, just for starters.
Further more, some countries have not allowed the "policy changes" ennacted. Makes a statement. Too bad our own country has become so spineless. I love my country. Make no mistake.
Only at ebay has thievery from buyers been nurtured and unaccounted, and I feel fairly certain that the law of averages as displayed over the centuries will kick in... is already kicking in.
What goes around, comes around. Particularly in light of such a bunch of moronic "soretails". By the way, I did get the euphemism.
Read the article if you dare:
seekingalpha.com/artic...
ebay should have been on this list. Could have been even two years ago. Present management has pushed it not to mediocrity, but loathing and ruin. You should HOPE to regain to a position of mediocrity. What a note for economic history.
I wouldn't want to be in those shoes.
I have to say, those numbers above of my volume and seller fees paid, compared to e bays total numbers may not mean much to them, but they have lost those numbers from me, and many other sellers as seen in the message boards, as I am discontinuing to use e bay, who was loyal for so many years and its sellers were loyal back. I cant see how this can be good for e bay stock, cash flow as well as myself and my buyers who I hope will find me elsewhere now. Buyers who now have a reason to go somewhere else to buy. E bay has spoken, sellers have listed and regrettably moving on to something else. These are resourceful business people who will do well marketing for another company.
Anyone considering investing or putting time into future sales may want to take a look at the aggressive policy’s they have put in place (There are little to no direct policy as there has been for the last 10 years) it is now “at there discretion” rather than a written or qualitative policy in many cases. This is making the company policy as un uniform as it has ever been. Even when the rules were written for all to see, there were interpretation issues, however, now it is just up to the person answering the phone or sending the e mail and no room for improvement or debate to better or change. Although communication has always been an issue for E bays customers as well as sellers on message boards complain how hard it is to get in touch with them and when you do no one on the other end seems to be empowered to help or care to do little more than quote out of the corporate handbook offered in form letters and help pages. If you are as lucky as us to have been a powerseller, you can call and sometimes have your call returned within 3-4 business days and hope to be available at the time the call is returned, you can ask the same question to 10 different e bay “officials” and get 10 different answers that do not relate to one another. This is not a speculation, this is based on personal experience as well as discussions with other large sellers. They have turned a blind eye to its sellers and buyers alike. I wouldn't be leaving if there was any good reason to stay.
I admit, service needed to be better, customer service is something that all should be striving to improve, there is a way to do that without destroying the e bay fabric that has worked so well in the past. I have a business to run, so there is not enough time to go into all details of in site, there are many dissatisfied sellers (who drive e bays profit) and dissatisfied buyers (who drive the sellers profit) and it does not take a NBA to fugue out the future.
E bay has done a poor job or emplaning the new changes to its buyers, sellers only after a few months of effect, some loosing there e bay business because of improper, unmonitored data, is still learning and it seems no one knows the answers even at the top account managers level. Its buyers do not realize that the DSR DETAILED SELLER RATING, the 5 stars under the feedback rating is not based on a 100 point scale like every other system in the free world. For example, from 1 to 5, 1 is poor, 3 is average and 5 is excellent. With e bay, 4,5 is average and 5 is good, I am glad they didn't have my math teachers in Collage. So many times buyers rate a 3 when they don't realize they are giving the seller a unacceptable rating that could potentially suspend his/her account from e bay as so many has been suspended in the last 3 months because of improper data that has been now used as the bible of e bay to rate seller performance. It should also be noted that a flaw in the data of the 5 star DSR is that if a customer is happy, they fell that leaving positive feedback served its purpose and they have caused a positive vote to the seller, e bay has not educated the buyer, so they do not leave a star rating at all, and are not required to and a large % do not, but leave a positive feedback as it is not required. But the buyer who is mad and is leaving hasty feedback will be more than motivated to leave a 1 or 2 for all stars. For this reason, good sellers offering great service and products are being suspended from e bay by record numbers, this cuts the life cord of the seller as well as e bay.
Ebay has ruined their market flair. Too many restricting rule changes, increased charges, paypal demands, seller ratings. This has ultimately destroyed their bottom line.
I was talking to another large seller, he said something that is funny but true, he said "e bay is the only company I know to date that has actually implemented the policy of THE BEATINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORAL HAS IMPROVED"
Ebay is definitely a stock headed down down down. The Wall Street analyst’s who cover Ebay need to find out what is really going on because the sellers who actually use ebay have been seeing it for the past several years as seen by past message/blogs. Anytime a company treats their customers with little or no concern, it’s not a good sign for the future.
There are alternatives to ebay and they are getting stronger everyday while e bay lets it strong sellers go who offer products that drive customers to the site. Many of them showing up to other sites and, yes, drawing e bay customers to competitors site.
CNBC analyst Jim Cramer said on Mad Money last night that he could not get behind the company, and that someone should buy the company "and put them out of their misery." That is a big statement in and of itself, however, that with all the negativity on message boards from its sellers and buyers in the past few months should have already grabbed someone's attention at e bay it would seem and some favorable policy changes would have followed already, this didn't come and could come too little too late.
It has been pointed out that CNBC analyst Jim Cramer said to buy, buy, buy at one time, the people who listened did well at that time. He has good in site to this company it would seem. Now I think this Caramer is a voice to listen to as he has made it clear that there is problems now, not anything that large sellers have not already foreseen for the last year.
www.marketintelligence...
www.thepetitionsite.co...
www.thepetitionsite.co...
Articles from bias 3rd party's are now starting to surface all over the Internet community, although limited to in site, show they know of seller dissatisfaction:
seekingalpha.com/artic...
It is speculated that the Standard & Poors rating will be updating soon, because of e bays unpresidented fast and agressive changes made in the last couple of months have not given any room for changes of amindments of ratings yet, but I will asure you they are coming the changes were simply done so fast and agressive that ratings have not had time to catch up. It would be advisable to keep a close eye on this in a few months when agressive policy changes reach the rating level.
I have a dedicated special interest and hope they turn themselves around, but it is going to take some quick and correct policy change to undo what has been done in what would be considered by many as "the most aggressive change e bay has ever done" it is costing sellers there business, although it is realized that a very few had to go, they are taking the good sellers, some of them my competitors out in the process. Not that I am sad to see some of my competitors go, it is still sad to know that these people have sold on e bay for 5-10 years, know they have adjusted themselves to e bay, the kind of inventory, business plan, warehousing and equipment and 100's of thousands in inventory stuck in the warehouse they cannot sell, all of this done to a veteran of e bay because of policy changes made/implemented over just a few months.
Overall fees have been raised twice this year, significantly. STR is dropping like a rock. The Best Match search is fatally flawed. Buyers can't find anything. Sellers can't sell and are being abused both by eBay with the hateful DSR system, and by bottom feeding scammer/buyers, because there is NO seller protection. There is also NO customer service. Sellers of the unique items that made eBay famous (and who paid listing fees) are leaving in droves, while eBay brokers deals with corporate sellers of new stuff you can get anywhere who don't pay listing fees. And their buyers are following them. Watch the Q3 figures.