Liz Gannes

Recent Posts by Liz Gannes

StumbleUpon's Second Wind Continues as It Raises $17M

StumbleUpon, the content discovery service, has raised $17 million in new funding, according to sources close to the company.

The round is from Accel Partners, August Capital, DAG Ventures, First Round Capital and Sherpalo Ventures.

StumbleUpon is on its second run as a start-up. The company raised $1.5 million in angel funding in 2005 and was bought by eBay in 2007 for $75 million in cash. In April 2009 it spun out of eBay with its founders and most of that list of investors providing Series A funding. This new round is being counted as a Series B.

StumbleUpon–which helps users serendipitously find new sites, photos and videos based on recommendations by friends and other users–has become a major traffic provider for blogs. Recent stats put out by the publisher tool provider Lijit had StumbleUpon delivering almost as much traffic as Facebook to sites within its network, and far more than Digg, Twitter and Reddit.

StumbleUpon is now up to 14 million registered users and makes 800 million content recommendations per month.

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Just as the atom bomb was the weapon that was supposed to render war obsolete, the Internet seems like capitalism’s ultimate feat of self-destructive genius, an economic doomsday device rendering it impossible for anyone to ever make a profit off anything again. It’s especially hopeless for those whose work is easily digitized and accessed free of charge.

— Author Tim Kreider on not getting paid for one’s work