If you didn’t notice, our favorite web giants have recently been snapping up smaller players and their latest acquisitions are pretty exciting for the end user.

Let’s begin

MySpace + Photobucket

Photobucket is a photo sharing website that entered the game too late. But for only opening their doors in 2003, they have grown to an enormous size of reportedly 25 million users and stealing a huge 43% market share (compare that to Flickr’s almost 6%). Via Hitwise

In early May, after much speculation, the merger between the two companies was confirmed for an undisclosed amount (rumored close to $300 million). Photobucket’s amazing growth in just four years can be attributed to MySpace’s sheer number of users as it’s the #1 site where Photobuckets photos are posted.

In fact, integration for the two companies should be pretty simple as most Photobucket’s users are already MySpace users. The companies seem to be perfectly aligned for this merger, so it makes total sense for MySpace to go out and pick up Photobucket.

Google + Feedburner

Another 2003 startup to have a successful $100 million exit is Feedburner.

If you have a blog and care for RSS traffic analysis, you’re probably already a Feedburner user. It standardizes the feed and gives the publisher various data for research, profiting and more.

Because Google knows everything, they know how fast the blogosphere is growing and they know the monetization possibilities of Feedburner (think AdWords in feeds, etc.)

Awesome acquisition and a good ROI for Feedburner investors.

eBay + StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a different type of link sharing website as it uses a recommendation system for links for its users. With 150% growth over the last year, it is one of the best ways to discover new content online.

eBay was apparently impressed about StumbleUpon’s community-making abilities and in its efforts to “pioneer new communities,” it acquired SU for $75 million.

SU now has a huge parent company that it can use to power an even bigger growth in the upcoming years. Thankfully, eBay is known not to ruin its acquisitions (ex: Skype) More via Yahoo!

Big acquisitions in June?

Could Facebook and Yahoo! finally tie the knot? This is something I’m going to keep an eye on. Facebook has been making quite a splash with its Applications offering and there’s simply no stopping this company.

FB has a much better community than MySpace and with Applications, it finally has all the (if not more) social aspects that MySpace had for years.

But can its $2 billion pricetag finally be met? I guess we’ll see soon enough. Via Mashable