StumbleUpon, social Websurfing for the masses
10.05.06 - 04:38am
It seems like everything is going social on the web lately. There are social video, picture, network, and car sites to mention a few options out there. The social websurfing genre has had a few websites pop up such as Digg.com and del.icio.us however neither of these websites are tailored to individual users. Enter StumbleUpon, the social random websurfing sidebar machine.. thing. In essence I would describe StumbleUpon as a matchmaking service but for websites rather than people. You fill out their simple questionnaire and they find suitable websites that will most likely compliment your websurfing habits.
Installation
The installation process of StumbleUpon is rather simple, you can start by installing their StumbleUpon Firefox extension. This sidebar will be your portal to the web. However before you can begin your adventure into social websurfing you must define your Internet personality. The initial account creation form has roughly 40 categories that you can subscribe to that will determine what sites are funneled your way. For example if you click the Cats, Satire, and Photography categories then StumbleUpon will funnel sites that are based around Cats, Satire, or Photography and sometimes all three. This level of customization is really where the power of StumbleUpon comes out. I personally clicked every Technology related category and then humor and space exploration and once I had completed the form I was on my way to Stumble the Internet.
Impressions
Stumbling was rather easy, simply click the Stumble! button and off you go. My initial Stumble lead me to a game called POOM! which was rather entertaining till I mastered it on my Macbook trackpad. Proceeding from there I burned a good hour and a half filling my brain with all sorts of Tech knowledge. Now StumbleUpon features a lot more than just a Stumble button. Every website that you Stumble to there is the option to vote if you like or dislike the page. From your votes StumbleUpon will make changes to your profile so that it tries to better serve you. Over the last 2 days StumbleUpon has become rather fine tuned in my case and today I have yet to hit a website that I have disliked. Now all this level of customization is great but where is the social aspect to all of this?
Everyone gets a profile that shows what they like, where they’ve Stumbled, and what they have submitted to StumbleUpon. Within StumbleUpon you can friend people, create social networks, and in general stalk your friends online. I’ve already got a few friends on StumbleUpon and it is fun to stalk them. One neat feature when you Stumble lets you know if there are other users on the same page, if so their name will pop up on your bar so that you could friend them if you were interested. The social aspect of StumbleUpon is great for figuring out what your friends like and sharing ideas however it pales in comparison to the actual Stumble service.
Conclusion
I must admit StumbleUpon is a great way to burn some time but on occasion I do find some rather interesting material that I could potentially write about or at least benefit from knowing. I suppose it really depends on how you use the service, there is the potential to use this as a sort of “writing material” service for bloggers and such but then you’d be under-utilizing all the great websites that StumbleUpon has crawled. If you are looking for something fun to read or watch, I highly suggest checking out StumbleUpon, it is a great way to take short breaks from banging out code and material on the computer.
I’m still in two minds about this. I tried it a few weeks (months?) back and it was, well, harsh, and still okay. Yet, I found some cool sites there, so it certainly has potential.
Problem, for instance, you can submit your own site. I got a few hits from that, so pity I don’t get income from that, lol.
I think Swarm has more ‘ad random’ stuff and that’s what I think people appreciate more in their 15 minutes off. We’ll see. Keep us updated.
Love the going pink theme, btw!
Glad to hear you enjoy the pink, working on fixing some of the bugs when my Internet connection will let me.
I’m finding that the more time I spend with StumbleUpon the more I realize I’ve seen most of this stuff. On reflection StumbleUpon might be better at exploring NEW genres of stuff, perhaps I should have chosen Poetry and Arts rather than Technology. I myself get a decent amount of hits from StumbleUpon which was part of the reason why I wrote this, I just HAD to check it out. Thanks for reading!