Ebay Inc. was the fastest growing company in 2007 for $75 million, though now StumbleUpon is sold for undisclosed fee

eBay now started to auction off ,well ironically, to the original owners. Skype could be next in line.

Stumbleupon, the personalized recommendation service, publically announced yesterday that the original founders had bought back the company with a billion dollar discount returning to its investor start-up.

This has happened just two years after Ebay Inc. purchased StumbleUpon on a very high ranking price.  The fee was a massive $75 million dollars which many of the public could not think how this would fit into the e-commerce site, Ebay.Who would of thought we would be in this position today?

Thankfully for most, StumbleUpon has now acquired the backing of the original founders. Garrett Camp, whom now is CEO of StumbleUpon and Geoff Smith purchased the company from eBay, though they could not of funded this by themselves so have been helped by other investors including Ram Shriram of Sherpalo Ventures, Accel Parteners and August Capital.

Garrett Camp, as CEO, quoted in his first official unveiling quoted:

“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,”

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

He also said in the official blog that,

“This will help StumbleUpon move quickly and stay true to its focus – helping people discover interesting web content. While there will be some internal changes at StumbleUpon, it will not impact the Stumbling experience and will help us create the best possible product.”

The company StumbleUpon was founded in 2001, bought for over $75 million by Ebay in May 2007. Now, the discovering and rating system has a base of over 7.4 million registered users. It also recieves over 20,000 advertisers who want to promote their websites on this heavy traffic site.

Chief Executive John Donahoe said himself that Ebay Inc. is not offering enough customer satisfaction and is not as competitive as it should be as one of the top e-commerce sites online as he saw shares rise and fall on the day that StumbleUpon was sold.

According to 3News, Ebay shares fell 39 cents, or 2.6 percent, to close at US$14.63 on Monday. Shares gained 25 cents to US$14.88 in after-hours electronic trade.

Actinic Express is an extremely useful tool for young entrepreneurs who have passed the first stage in planning out what is going to be sold on the site and have a domain name already set up, all paid for in advance. Now, all online entrepreneurs want to have a solid, well designed site in their hands. However, I personally think that as much as the design matters, the payment refinement system so that the customer can feel safe when ordering the specified product, which is just one of the features that the Actinic Express package contains.

Surprisingly enough,  Actinic Express authorizes you to use the package through a normal web browser, via the online portal that is provided meaning  you can manage all the product payments and be in contact with clients from anywhere in the world.

Easy to use start up menu with many useful features to be found.

Actinic Express supplies a website address but the down side is that it includes “actinicexpress.com” so it would be a good idea to have a domain name set up already with another company such as Hostgator.

There are many options that you can customzide inside in the package, though Actinic Express have made them smaller. An example of some of the options included are the site design ( there are many themes available so it is just a matter of choosing the right one for your specified product) , product info and buisness details like terms and conditions, payment options.

One clear drawback is the stock/inventory control meaning you have to make each product on your own and so if you do not have one product in stock you will have to delete it manually.

Payments

Actinic Express costs £49.99 initially and then £19.99 per month from then. For the ease of use, it is not a bad price as you are receiving many new and improved features in comparison to other packages. However, the £19.99 subscription does not include the payment processing. Actinic Payments is usually is used to cover the £20 start fee and £100 yearly but this does cover 800 transactions which is worth it to be honest.

When customers come to pay for a product, Actinic Express allows a lot of widely known/used payment methods. Actinic can use Paypal, Google Checkout, Secpay, Protx as well as its own Actinic Payments.

Upgrades

If this makes your business a success almost straight away, there are two more packages that you can upgrade that will offer more advanced features. These are Actinic Catalogue (£399) and Actinic Business (£799.)

Advantages

-Lots of payment options i.e not just one payment method.

-Easy to use.

-Can manage in just a web browser.

-Flexible online Catalogue.

Disadvantages

-Expensive especially over long term payments.

-No free domain.

-HTML difficulties.

-Range of templates poor.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I think if you are willing to pay money up front and monthly, in order to make your online store a success, this is the product for you which contains many easy to use features which will contribute in making a brilliant site. However, if you are quite weary of the payments, there are other packages out there you can use but most of them do not offer as many features as this does. In addition, Actinic Express is a great piece of software which allows you to make an online shop successfully with minimal fuss.