If you were eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) you would have several good reasons for paying $75 million for StumbleUpon, right? I know that if I was eBay I myself would need significant justification for paying that amount of money for a social discovery site. Since May 30, 2007 when eBay announced that a deal had been reached for the purchase of StumbleUpon, more news from the company about that acquisition and any underlying reasons has been absent.

Everyone, from analysts to kids with frogs in their pockets, has been waiting for some manner of revelation regarding eBay's reason for buying StumbleUpon. Because there seem to be few concrete explanations about why this deal took place, I decided to throw my hat in. eBay bought bodies, that's it.

eBay bought a user base of about 2.5 million users to augment its own membership numbers. StumbleUpon came into the deal with nothing to offer eBay beyond user names. Although StumbleUpon is quite a fun place, it has nothing which will breath new life into an auction site. If eBay had interesting plans or a measurable strategy to make use of StumbleUpon in any tangible way, it would be trumpeting those facts everywhere, but from where I sit the silence is deafening.

eBay and StumbleUpon: The silence is deafening originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 19 Jun 2007 18:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.