StumbleUpon has gone independent, parting company with eBay who acquired the social surfing startup two years ago for $75 million.

The acquisition was lead by founders Garrett Camp and Geoff Smith, as well as Ram Shriram of Sherpalo Ventures, Accel Partners, and August Capital. The price of the acquisition (or is that buy-back?) was not disclosed, but is believed to be less than the $75 million eBay paid for the company at the top of the last tech boom.

“We are grateful to eBay for its guidance. However, we realized there were few long-term synergies between the two businesses. It is best for us to part ways and focus on our respective strengths,” said Garrett Camp in a statement. “This change makes it possible for StumbleUpon to continue to innovate and focus on becoming the Web’s largest recommendation service.”

Despite the lack of “long term synergies,” the company has grown at eBay, with 7.4 million users and 425 million recommendations per month. The company also claims it has 20,000 advertisers.

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Proving once more that the best ideas are often stolen, Digg has launched the DiggBar, an iframed toolbar that offers a range of features.

At its core, the DiggBar is naturally a voting platform for Digg. Users can Digg a site while on the site via the frame, and if the page is not already in the system, use the DiggBar to submit it. Along side the service is a handy URL shortening feature that is used by adding digg.com in front of any URL in a browser. Socially, the DiggBar supports related content and “random” content, so you can navigate through items that have previously been featured by Digg.

If those things all sound familiar, they should, because URL shortening aside, it’s a dead copy of what’s already being offered by StumbleUpon (who now offers a similar iFrame toolbar) and Reddit (via the Socialite plugin). Some sites have gushed over the DiggBar, using superlatives such as “amazing” and “incredible;” yes, the implementation is solid, but the idea is none of those things. Forgive me that unlike others I’m not interested in dropping my head into the crotch of Kevin Rose with my mouth wide opened.

What is interesting though is that Rose and company have decided to take on StumbleUpon with the move, although admittedly it’s not in the same league yet (no category surfing for example). There’s talk of ads appearing in the DiggBar, but it should be remembered how StumbleUpon makes money: by selling page views that are added when users are stumbling. It’s a solid business model, and from experience, a great way to advertise a site. Here’s betting that Digg wants a slice of this action as well.

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According to MG Siegler at VentureBeat, the new StumbleUpon will be rolled out in the coming weeks, with some users gaining access to the new version starting from now. The plug-in free StumbleUpon will utilize what MG calls “clever JavaScript code” to show a bar at the top of the screen, giving users a similar experience without the plug-in, although I’d note it looks suspiciously like an old fashioned iFrame to me.

StumbleUpon has been fairly popular, attracting some 6 million users since first launching in 2002. However, their reliance on a browser plugin is a natural growth inhibitor; some people simply won’t install a plug-in, particularly one as obtrusive as StumbleUpon offers, others simply don’t have access, with StumbleUpon offering plugins for Internet Explorer and Firefox only. The new StumbleUpon caters to both registered users and casual visitors; anyone visiting StumbleUpon will be able to surf their range of sites on any browser without a plugin, and that’s got to help bring new users through the door.

StumbleUpon isn’t abandoning their browser plugin, despite the changes. It’s hoped that the new offering opens StumbleUpon to new users, but old users won’t miss out.

Social voting

StumbleUpon is also moving more into the social voting space through a new program called StumbleThru. Initial site partners include The Huffington Post, Rolling Stone, National Geographic and HowStuffWorks. It looks like a social voting widget ala Digg or Reddit buttons, and site visitors are able to vote for content via the widget. Users will either then be taken to the formal voting page on StumbleUpon, or to another site in the StumbleUpon network of recommended sites. According to VentureBeat, StumbleUpon is limiting this program to “quality sites” to avoid gaming of the system, so it’s limited on wider use.

Conclusion

I like StumbleUpon. I like it as both a user, and an advertiser. When we launched The Inquisitr, we had a small advertising budget, and I tried a number of sites, and one I kept going back to was StumbleUpon. The traffic was real, and it helped us in exposing the site to new visitors, and every time I renewed the ad spend, I could measure the success not only in traffic (you may pay for 500 page views, but if you get enough positive votes you end up getting a lot more), but in RSS subscriptions as well. As much as I haven’t used it now for some time, I’m happy to recommend it to others.

These changes are both an obvious and logical step forward for StumbleUpon. The site has been losing traffic, at least according to Compete, Quantcast and Alexa, and they need to do something new to increase page views, particularly at a time they may well be on the market. This is the right move, and it can certainly do no harm.

(image credit: VentureBeat)

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For those not familiar with the idea, the general theme of social browsing services is to offer shared surfing and sharing. That might be delivered by a plugin, or be native to the site, and it may or may not included a friends list or broader community recommendations. Often there’s a live element, so you view the same page at the same time as a friend, and lately that’s included a chat functionality as well…and I may have even seen one that included video.

Not all social browsing services are the same, and some are better than others. Me.dium is fairly impressive, and I had a play with Browzmi earlier this year. Although I didn’t write about Browzmi, it was only due to my inability to not completely trash the underlying idea, even if the implementation (which didn’t involve a plugin) was solid.

With Socialbrowse, the only point of differentiation I could spot is that they’ve copied Twitter and added microblogging to the list…because the world lacks microblogging sites, or something like that.

YooNo, a Cluztr or Swarm may result in a Reko, but a Me.dium to well done Slingpage delivered in Browzmi may compete with Flock, but Thatsmymouse isn’t half a Ginza Walk, and even eBay is trying to flog Stumbleupon. PS: that’s only the recent list.

At its root, the idea of social browsing, particularly at a time social networking is more popular than ever and we connect in new and different ways, should be a good idea, at least so you’d think. And yet, StumbleUpon and Flock aside, both of which don’t embrace the shared surfing/ buddy experience typical in many of the others, there hasn’t be a major break out in 10 years. The reality is, people don’t want to surf webpages with other people, not at least in large enough numbers to sustain one of these startups, let alone dozens. Social browsing services are chasing a market that on the whole doesn’t exist beyond a niche play, and most of these services are not going to make it.

What I do find staggering though is that new ones keep popping up, and better still with funding. Are VC’s so bereft of investment ideas that they continue to back one of the oldest ideas in the playbook over and over again? Isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?

Social browsing as a new startup idea needs to die. There may room for a small, unfunded startup to sustain something close to a real business, or one or two slightly bigger player from the existing services, but for everyone else, there isn’t room at the inn. Many may have chuckled at the 4th or 5th social browsing startup, but now it’s just getting plain stupid. Enough! Please!

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The options come as part of the newly launched BuddyUpdates feature for AOL’s instant messaging platform. The feature lets you link your buddy list to third-party sites including Twitter, Blogger, Flickr, del.icio.us, Mixx, StumbleUpon, and YouTube. There’s also an option to add an unlisted service, so you could theoretically connect almost anything — a non-Blogger blog or a FriendFeed page, for example.

Once linked up, friends can see your recent activity from the AIM sign-in page or right within the AIM window itself. The BuddyUpdates service is still under beta mode.

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