eBay acquires Jump
The personal online trading community puchases Jump, the developer and operator of Up4Sale, an advertising-supported trading service.
The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
The acquisition comes on the heels of eBay's announcement yesterday that it had filed for an IPO to go public. The company plans to issue shares worth up to $64.8 million, which some sources think would put the total value of the company at close to $1 billion. Earlier in July, uBid, another Internet auction site, also filed to go public.
In a statement announcing the acquisition, eBay said it was buying Jump in order to develop an expanded venue in which to provide future services.
Jump's Up4Sale, launched in 1997, currently has 45,000 items listed in 27,000 separate auctions and 50,000 registered members. eBay currently operates Up4Sale as an independent service.
eBay runs a one-to-one trading site in an auction format. Currently, eBay users list items in more than 800 categories, from pre-1900s antiques to trading cards and jewelry. The company estimates that about 70,000 items are added daily. eBay has more than 850,000 registered users.
Other online auctions and trading sites include Onsale.com, uBid, First Auction, Surplus Auction, and Excite's Classifieds2000.
In other company news, eBay also announced two appointments to its Board of Directors. Scott Cook, founder and chairman of Intuit, and Howard Schultz, chairman and chief executive officer of Starbucks Coffee.
Cook founded Intuit in 1983 and has helped personalize the way people manage their financial lives. Schultz has helped Starbucks to grow from 4 coffee houses to more than 1,778 spanning the United States, United Kingdom, and the Pacific Rim.
With the appointment of Cook and Schultz, the eBay board consists of five directors including Pierre Omidyar, chairman and founder; Meg Whitman, president and chief executive officer; and Bob Kagle, general partner at Benchmark Capital.