StumbleUpon is shutting down after 16 years; moving to Mix.com

What a good run! StumbleUpon, the discovery and advertisement engine that pushes recommends of web content to its users, is shutting down after 16 years. Co-founder Garrett Camp announced on Medium that the site will shutter on June 30th. All existing StumbleUpon accounts will transition into Mix.com over the next couple months.

“Sixteen years ago, we started StumbleUpon to help people discover new webpages. The idea was simple: click a button to find a cool webpage. It was easy and fun. Over the years SU has delivered personalized content to over 40 million users, serving up nearly 60 billion stumbles. StumbleUpon pioneered content discovery on the web, before the concepts of the “like button”, “news feed” or “social media” were mainstream,” Camp said.

StumbleUpon was founded in November 2001 by Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith, Justin LaFrance and Eric Boyd. The site grew in popularity before being overshadowed by Facebook. In its heyday, Stumbleupon accounted for more publisher traffic than YouTube, Reddit, Linkedin and Google combined, according to a 2013 fourth quarter Shareaholic’s Social Media Traffic Report. Stumbleupon’s advertising and content distribution platform was used by over 100,000 publishers, brands and marketers to promote their products and services. Stumbleupon also served over 125 million brand and publisher sponsored placements per month.

StumbleUpon has a long history. In May 2007, eBay purchased StumbleUpon in an all cash deal of $75 million. In September 2008, eBay hired Deutsche Bank to try to sell StumbleUpon again. Then in April 2009, StumbleUpon stumbled out of eBay’s to be reborn as a startup all over again. No financial details were disclosed. Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith and several investors later bought the company back.

Camp went on to say: “After careful consideration, we’ve made the decision to focus fully on building Mix and transition StumbleUpon accounts into Mix.com over the next couple months. We have built Mix to work on every browser and smartphone, to make the transition as smooth as possible. With a few clicks you can register and import your SU favorites, interests and tags — creating Mix Collections that are easily shared with friends. If you have any questions, email support@mix.com for help.”