Feb
Understanding StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is such a nice service. It’s easy to use and it works well for its intended purpose - showing you one cool site after another with the click of a button.
If you haven’t heard of it yet, SU is based on user input. As users surf the web, they click on either a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down to show what they think of any given site. Because there are thousands of users (I think,) it’s a good bet that you’ll only see good sites when you click on “Stumble!” and automatically get redirected to a new site.
While it’s great for surfers, it’s also great for webmasters with a cool site to show off. Just stumble your own site and then it will be shown to other Stumblers. If the site is indeed cool, it will get passed around the SU community. Because of this, some webmasters have been trying to manipulate StumbleUpon by creating “stumble exchanges.” Now they have gone as far as creating membership sites where members can exchange stumbles easily.
The two sites in question are StumbleXchange and Avuw. First off, I’ll admit that I really like the concept of this. The sites are kind of manipulating SU, but if the sites being promoted are cool, this is just a way to speed up the stumbling process.
However, problems arise when ignorant webmasters put their lame sites into these exchanges. They don’t understand that StumbleUpon is for cool and unique sites! Cheesy MFA sites need not apply. But they do anyway! And with enough of these MFA webmasters, they will start stumbling each other and then the common user will start seeing MFA sites. That won’t be good for SU’s image. Hopefully the SU community will start giving the “thumbs-down” to any of these crappy sites though 
Here are some example sites I see on SU:
- http://www.pandora.com
- http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/humor/reject.html
- http://www.dontclick.it
- http://www.cs.tlu.ee/~meelis/catmusic/
- http://artwc.org/Billie2/0118FUNNIES/0118.html
I like seeing those sites. But here are some sites I don’t like seeing:
- http://www.splc-isca.org
- http://www.ffpu.com
- http://www.thedollarfactory.com
- http://www.scriptmadness.com (the worst)
Those are actually sites that people expect you to Stumble (via the exchanges.) Some of them totally suck, and some are OK at best. But sometimes the site will have a decent page and for some reason the webmaster submits the home page! If you have a cool page, submit the cool page!
At first I was happy with the exchanges, but now I’m leaning away from them. At least until people with quality sites join in. Or until people read this and understand the point of StumbleUpon!
Want a good laugh every day? Then simply subscribe to our RSS feed.
Or subscribe via email.
Related Articles:
Like this article?
Post to Del.icio.us
Share on Facebook
AIM to a friend
Click here to buy me a beer, because damn, I need to get drunk to forget how much internet marketing sucks!
Hi,
Great article, I’m surprised no-one has commented on it yet. You are the sexiest blogger on this website - which is a very highly contested award.
If it wasn’t for unicorns who pledged to follow the tale of King Arthur if they got to win the final round in the ping pong championship held in Geneva, this site wouldn’t be here for us today.
PS. Elcid became the first person to ride a blue whale the size of malt and then backflipped a horsecart that had several ways of cooking pancakes
I joined SU back last year with a hope to find good sites to Stumble. It led for me to be called the procrastinator’s tool and I spent hours on the Internet clicking the little logo site after site. Some sites are incredibly awesome and will amaze you with the content and those really unique sites hidden under the web. Digg doesn’t really expose these sites, but rather just daily content. SU is expanding quickly, and I’m very happy to be apart of the community.
Your blog post here has really placed SU in its most simplest form. It’s a great invention and will certainly expand over the next few years.
Great blog, gotta go read ya Adsense stuff, seems useful as a webmaster.
Hi,
It’s a nice site even i’m planning to develope blog site after seeing soo many posts in DP.I like your logo color blue.
Very cool article!
added back link at: http://www.efervent.com/viewtopic.php?t=825
First off i totally agree when you mentioned:
“it’s a good bet that you’ll only see good sites when you click on Stumble!”
yes, that exactly is the core intention of stumble upon and fortunately, its still on track!
I was waiting for someone to talk (blog!) about stuble exchange sites. I always though that they were all illegal sites and should be closed… but you argument here seems to change my point of view. I though that such sites are anti-SU… But, as your arguemnt goes:
“The sites are kind of manipulating SU, but if the sites being promoted are cool, this is just a way to speed up the stumbling process.”
I now have totally new point of view! seems like, i misunderstood these sites. I kind of have some respect for them now!
also, pandora.com is my loved site too!
before ending my comment, i’ll also share a few sites i found on stumble:
http://www.bugmenot.com
http://www.htmlplayground.com
http://www.requestavatar.com
http://k10k.net/pixelpatterns
and the list goes on! anyways, thanks for coolest article on SU
Romit.
The concept of Stumble upon is really good, but it lacks something, i agree people go there and like to see cool websites but do they add it to their favourites? or should say directly do they visit again?
I dont think becoz we all are just to lazy to just remeber a website we ’stumbled upon’.
everone would just go to stumble upon again again and search for new sites, the older ones he’ll see he’ll try to get off from it.
So the ever hungry net users may not be satisfied by SU.
We need this kind of Services from time o time.
Right now Hype is for SU then let it be…time to go n submit a site!!!
Good point sjsjsj215. I bet in 90% of cases the “stumblers” never go back to a site, even if they liked it. A lot of the sites are just funny or interesting pictures that are great to see once, but not exactly something to keep checking.
However, I think about Pandora (the online radio.) I go back to it all the time. So it just depends on the site.
Romit, I’m glad you liked my article
Let’s hope that SU keeps growing and only gets better!
yes! Lets hope it remains just as solid as it is now!
Thank You for the advice
I see Stumble as a great way to produce some uniques, and a great way to increase keyword results in yahoo but for those looking for the rankings from the “G”od they will have to keep looking due to the no-follow tags. Just my two cents =)
Yah, i have noticed that the traffic i get from stumbleupon isn’t that great on any of my sites.
Honestly, I’ve stopped trying to get traffic from SU and gone back to just using it to surf the web when bored. 99.97% of the traffic I’ve ever received from SU has been more or less crap.