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.

Read More »

SiliconANGLE blogger John Furrier found a supersweet television ad that eBay Internet phone unit Skype is running to goose its brand.

The once-hottest-ever start-up–touted up and down Silicon Valley for its explosive growth back in 2003–is still a major global brand with a massive 405 million user accounts at the end of 2008.

In fact, Skype’s size makes media-overhyped Twitter seem, well, twee, by comparison. Twitter had only 9.8 million unique visitors in February, up impressively from 6.1 million in January.

But the hot-or-not comparisons between the two are interesting to think about.

Read More »