eBay sells StumbleUpon back to founders

eBay has returned the website recommendation engine StumbleUpon to its founders, according to reports.

StumbleUpon is a service that allows users to recommend sites to others in the community. eBay bought it in 2007 for $75m, but has apparently not disclosed the amount for which it sold it back to Garrett Camp and Geoff Smith (along with other investors).

Camp is quoted in The New York Times as saying StumbleUpon was "more focused on discovery and content", and it was "best if we parted ways and did our own thing". The company is set to launch a URL-shortening service called su.pr sometime in the next few months.

There has also recently been a flurry of interest around the idea of eBay selling Skype - another of its acquisitions that never quite panned out as expected - back to its creators. The WSJ reported on Monday that Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis have teamed up with a group of private equity firms (including Bono's Elevation Partners) to launch a bid for Skype that falls somewhat short of the epic $2.6bn that eBay paid for the VoIP firm back in 2005.

Keen as it is to sell the loss-making Skype (which took a $1.4bn write-down in 2007), eBay apparently said no.