The content-discovery service, StumbleUpon, has gotten itself back to start-up status, after being bought by eBay two years ago.

It announced today that it was returning to being an “investor-backed startup” by a roster of well-known Silicon Valley investors, including Ram Shriram of Sherpalo Ventures, Accel Partners and August Capital.

Its founders, Garrett Camp and Geoff Smith are also back, with Camp now in place as CEO.

“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 Camp, stating the very obvious.

That’s quite a boomerang since it was acquired by the auction giant in 2007 for $75 million.

Before that event, which was at the height of the Web 2.0 fervor, the Canadian-born social-bookmarking start-up, which launched several years ago, came to the Bay area in 2006 and got some fancy venture investors (Mitch Kapor, Ron Conway, Shriram and others) who ponied up a couple of million dollars. It soon became a traffic-generating hit.

But rumors of the San Francisco-based company being sold by eBay (EBAY) have swirled around it almost since it was bought, although there was no sale.

The same has been true for eBay’s other purchase, of voice-over-IP service Skype. A recent report in the New York Times said its founders were also considering buying Skype back from eBay.

Under eBay, the site has floundered a little bit, but made some changes, such as unveiling a new Web-centric look and feel and a new partnering program last fall that represented a major shift for the online discovery service.

In that change, users no longer had to register for the service or download its toolbar to “stumble” the Web.

Terms of the deal were not released, but we’re digging! Um, stumbling!

More to come, but here’s the full press release from the company, as well as a video I did at the party StumbleUpon threw after getting acquired by eBay, including an interview with then-thrilled Camp:

StumbleUpon Goes Independent; Backed by Founders and New Investors

April 13, 2009 – StumbleUpon, the best way to discover new content on the Internet, today announced that after nearly 2 years as a subsidiary of eBay Inc., it has returned to the ranks of an investor-backed startup. StumbleUpon is now backed by the original company founders, Garrett Camp and Geoff Smith, as well as a number of well-known investors including Ram Shriram of Sherpalo Ventures, Accel Partners, and August Capital. Camp takes on the role of CEO of StumbleUpon.

“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 Camp. “This change makes it possible for StumbleUpon to continue to innovate and focus on becoming the Web’s largest recommendation service.”

“StumbleUpon helps users discover the best of the web–it’s a way to find interesting content you wouldn’t think to search for,” said Shriram. “StumbleUpon’s personalized recommendation engine brings serendipity back to websurfing, and lets users sift through socially-endorsed content with a single click.”

StumbleUpon will remain focused on helping people discover interesting content by increasing the accessibility of the StumbleUpon service and the quality of recommendations. In addition, StumbleUpon has plans for several new products and features to be released in the upcoming months.

There was no doubt, given the continuing economic collapse and all the joy that brings, that Demo09 was going to be a much tamped-down and sober affair this year.

But there are still a lot of interesting start-ups being featured in the main ballroom and demo “pit,” such as a cool “touch book” offering, a strange hooking-up-in-a-bar smartphone app and a plethora of ideas that obviously got their inspiration from the iPhone from Apple (AAPL).

As in: touch, swipe, interact! (Which is the official BoomTown motto, in point of fact.)

Demo Executive Producer Chris Shipley is still running the show. But VentureBeat founder and Editor-in-Chief Matt Marshall will take over the longtime, semiannual conference–where several dozen start-ups strut their stuff in front of an industry crowd–in 2010.

Here is the video I did of the event, which was held in Palm Desert, Calif., and ends today. It includes serial entrepreneur Mitch Kapor, PR guy Brian Solis and All Things Digital Co-Executive Editor Walt Mossberg.

With the naming of Oracle (ORCL) President Charles Phillips to President Barack Obama’s 16-Member Economic Recovery Advisory Board a few days ago, another Silicon Valley tech mandarin fell off the list to become America’s first chief technology officer.

The job–which was promised by President Barack Obama during his campaign and underscored when he released a memorandum on transparency and open government that outlined some of the CTO duties the day after he was sworn in–remains unfilled.

In fact, so does the Federal Communications Commission chairman’s post, which insiders said a month ago would go to former IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI) exec Julius Genachowski. But he has not been nominated yet.

Both Genachowski and Phillips were on a short list floated in November by The Wall Street Journal for CTO. The third name on it, Level 3 (LVLT) exec Don Gips, has since been named to a high-level White House job.

While the continuing economic crisis has sucked all the oxygen from the room, the Obama administration has still made a lot of promises about tech issues, from improving broadband to making the government more transparent and digital.

So, who is getting the job as head geek?

Could it be well-known entrepreneur Mitch Kapor? Google (GOOG) guru-in-resident and Internet father Vint Cerf? Or some other tech-savvy Silicon Valley figure?

BoomTown is, of course, rooting for Steve “Woz” Wozniak. Once he wins “Dancing With the Stars” this season, he will be the only nerd capable of the two-stepping one needs to survive in Washington.

Post new guesses in comments below.

And, until someone is appointed to fix the nation’s computers, here is the Jan. 21 memo Obama released about some of the tasks ahead for America’s CTO:

MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES

BARACK OBAMA

[Photo of the t-shirt from ThinkGeek.]

Last Friday, BoomTown paid a visit to James Joaquin, who has just been officially appointed the new CEO of Foxmarks, the Mitch Kapor-backed start-up that makes a free bookmarking and password syncing add-on for the Firefox browser.

The San Francisco-based company had also has gotten $5 million in funding from Redpoint Ventures earlier this summer. Initially, Foxmarks had been founded and seed-funded by Kapor, the well-known tech entrepreneur, and also got an additional investment from First Round Capital.

With the arrival of Joaquin, Foxmarks is trying to move into a mode of carving out a business with its assets, including using its data and expanding beyond the Firefox browser.

Here is the video interview with Joaquin about all that and more:

The event–this year at Foreign Cinema in the Mission District of San Francisco–is held to elicit feedback from the Internet’s movers and shakers about the new directions the conference, set to take place in San Francisco in mid-October, should head in.

Except Battelle and O’Reilly already came up with a theme: “The Web’s Edge.”

I am not entirely sure what that means. Is it that it is at an edge? Or that we need to look at the edge? Or just that things just feel all pointy lately? Big thoughts all!

In any case, the party was a lot of fun and filled with digital personalities, like Mitch Kapor and Ann Winblad, as well as a few folks I interviewed like ex-AOLer Jon Miller, ex-Fox exec Ross Levinsohn, VC David Sze, Tina Sharkey of BabyCenter and Webby Awards founder Tiffany Shlain.

Here’s the video:

We’ve certainly got a lot of important questions to ask this pair, who really are the twin icons of the digital revolution and key players in its evolution. They also have had a dramatic professional relationship and, just as often, rivalry.

Given the long history of cooperation and competition they have shared, that they have agreed to show up to be interviewed together should make for great high-tech theater.

After next week, Gates will have been onstage at all five D conferences and Jobs will have been four times (he will also appear in a solo interview earlier in the day next Wednesday).

This site will have all sorts of coverage, from live blogs to photos to video excerpts of the whole event (more on that later).

But in the spirit of user-generated content (we mainstream-media types are fast learners), I will be going around all this week with my little video camera and asking well-known tech types and also average folks–good thing I live in San Francisco, where there is a large concentration of geeks–what they would ask the pair if they could.

Starting tomorrow, I will post the video queries, but you can also add questions in the comments section below. Until then, here are three photos by Asa Mathat of the duo at our third D in 2005 at dinner, sharing obviously amusing tales (I would love to know about what), and three more yukking it up with another tech icon, Mitch Kapor.