Skype and StumbleUpon to Split with eBay

Although traffic has been "stumbling" over the last year, decreasing steadily since February 2008, social sharing service StumbleUpon has broken off from eBay and returned to its original status as an investor-backed startup with its original founders. Plus, there are talks that eBay is trying to sell off Skype.



We're thinking that eBay may be hurting and is trying to cut off the lines that may be holding it back. We're hoping this move will help both sites stagger their way back to their peak in pageviews and visitors.

StumbleUpon, a site that allows you to discover web sites based on your interests, was sold to eBay two years ago. Since then, many users have found the site to be somewhat lacking in innovation and most are still trying to find out what exactly eBay's interest in the site was originally. But eBay didn't capitalize on the site as much as would have been expected. So now it's gone back to its beginnings ... sort of. Same founders, new investors and, we're sure, a renewed enthusiasm to bring the weird, interesting and unique of the web to the common people.

The same thing appears to be happening with Skype. Sold in 2005 for $3.1 billion, which eBay admits it "grossly overpaid" for, the peer-to-peer company is going up on the selling block again. eBay says it's because it doesn't work with the companies two core businesses (auction and PayPal), but we're not so sure. It seems like an effort for eBay to try and cut ties with something it had no right to purchase anyway. Because of a legal dispute with Skype's founders, it looks like the company might not be able to go anywhere until 2010.

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