I loved and used StumbleUpon for several months before it suddenly dawned on me that I never did use it the way the designer’s intended. I was amazed to find so many other people who think like I think and knew what I knew. Where else can you find others who think like you? What other site attracts so many brilliant geeks?
Adding these awesome stumblers as friends willy-nilly, I did not realize they would be inundated with all the pages I linked in. I used it as a giant annotated bookmark site for organizing a huge amount of research on a wide range of subjects. While I regularly reviewed and added sites I found in other Stumbler’s blogs, I almost never clicked Stumble! and I have never stumbled only in any particular stumblers pages.
What is StumbleUpon?
StumbleUpon helps you discover and share great websites. As you click 
Stumble, they deliver high-quality pages matched to your personal preferences. Stumbleupon also has features where you can associate your account with other “friends” via the stumbleupon.com site. This allows you to see updates they make to their webpage, you can see also what they are stumbling.
Stumbleupon toolbar is may be what makes Stumbleupon really special form other social bookmarking website, stumbleupon users have the ability to give websites a thumbs up or a thumbs down as they surf the internet. It tracks the votes and then uses that information later when a user clicks on a stumble button on that same toolbar, stumble also this will take them to random WebPages that other users have given a thumbs ups for.
Users can also use the Stumble Upon toolbar as a form of social bookmarking. By surfing the web and tagging or submitting specific websites, each user can keep track of which websites they like and share it with others.
StumbleThru – Site Specific Stumbling
What about you? Do you click Stumble? Do you Stumble-Thru particular sites or other Stumblers blogs? How do you use SU? I would love to know and I bet there are tons of others who would too so leave a comment or drop a link to your own posts about SU and/or to your SU blog. I will correct any format or length errors. Anyone who ends up here will be a serious SU fan so there is no telling who you can meet and what great blogs you will discover.
How much do you know about StumbleUpon? Did you know: When ebay bought StumbleUpon for about $75 million many wondered why and others started paying attention if they weren’t already. SearchEngineJournal shed light on why with an interview with StumbleUpon’s CEO titled StumbleUpon Defined vs. Digg, Google, MySpace and more and followed that up with Five Reasons Why Marketers Should Take an Interest in StumbleUpon.
Long before the sale many had realized that StumbleUpon was something special. But what really got attention was the large amount of traffic being mentioned there could send.
EGOL asked at SEOmoz if Anybody Else Was Getting Good Traffic from StumbleUpon? In August 2006, SEOmoz’s Randfish blogged about StumbleUpon’s Fantastic Ability to Drive Traffic.
Many experience The Power of StumbleUpon where one thumbs up at SU can generate 63 comments in one day, thanks from the blog owner, and huge jumps on Alexa graphs. But for a real glimpse into how much traffic StumbleUpon can really drive read AimClearBlog’s My StumbleUpon Friend.
That traffic driving ability caused many to try to figure out how to Become a Top Stumbler. There has been much speculation regarding how to become an “authority figure” at StumbleUpon. There are many theories on how the StumbleUpon algorithm works. Tim Nash posted his theories in the Venture Skills Blog:
- Stumbleupon Mathematics for stumblers
- More Questions Than Answers
- Organic Stumbling Tip
- To Send-To or Not To Send-To; That is the Question
Maki was right when he posted How to Become a Top StumbleUpon User (or Why You Really Shouldn’t Bother). Perceptive readers of the interview Brian at NowSourcing did with a 16 Year Old StumbleUpon Power User will realize what actually works. Intention counts. Those who give the most to any social networking site including StumbleUpon will have the most influence. If your only interest is selling something that will be obvious and seriously undermine anything you do.
Web Two-Point-Whatever posted that “a number of people have asked [him] how I get so many visitors to my sites via StumbleUpon. To answer that question, I first need to make it very clear that I don’t actually ‘get’ Stumblers to my sites per say. Instead, I share what I enjoy both what I find on other sites.” He offers tips on being a contributor to SU in Share Your Stuff: Effectively and Ethically Submitting Pages to StumbleUpon & Stumblers.
Social Networking sites benefit those who contribute to the greater good. My favorite articles on how to do that are these provided by Maki at DoshDosh. They are excellent primers on StumbleUpon:
- Comprehensive Guide to StumbleUpon
- StumbleUpon Networking: How to Easily Build Content and Share Relationships
- Five Simple Ways to Grow Your StumbleUpon Network: An Ode to Altruistic Stumbling
There have also been some great posts on how to be an asset to SU. One of my favorites is Andy Beard’s 25 Reasons You Get Thumbs Up. Another is Dana Wallet’s All I Needed to Know About Social Media I Learned in Kindergarten. Both of these blogs are among the best on the Net for quality content and having hearts of gold.
Bill Hartzer suggested Claiming Your StumbleUpon Blog Through Technorati (You’ll definitely want to do this.) Dana Wallert sorted out the multitude of StumbleUpon posts to give us 34 StumbleUpon Posts That Aren’t Crap. If that doesn’t satiate your interest, Lyndon – affectionately known as The Linkbait Cowboy to his friends – went hog wild compiling this Categorized List of StumbleUpon Articles.
And naturally many really want to know how to drive traffic from StumbleUpon:
- Caroline Middlebrook: Livin’ Online – Boost Your StumbleUpon Traffic with Outbound Links
- SEOptimize How to Increase StumbleUpon Traffic
- AimClearBlog – Cross-Pollinating Social Media Viral Seeds
- Internet Marketing Mind – The Unspoken Secrets to LongLasting Traffic with StumbleUpon
- Earn Experience Online StumbleUpon is Your Trump
- Shaun Low – Blogging to Success – Definitive Guide to Driving Traffic from StumbleUpon
- Daily Moolah Ultimate Guide to Leveraging StumbleUpon
- Single Grain Making a Power Account on StumbleUpon
- You Need 2 See – How to Use StumbleUpon to Gain New Readers
- Tamar – 10e20 – How to Use StumbleUpon for Your Business: The Definitive Guide
- SearchEngineJournal – Build Super Links and Traffic with StumbleUpon
- Danny Sullivan – SearchEngineLand – StumbleUpon’s New Webmaster Friendly Referral Page
Additional Resources and Information:
- Tim Nash’s followed up his interesting Differences Between Users of StumbleUpon and Digg with StumbleUpon versus Digg Page Layouts in his Venture Skills Blog
- GumperCoder’s 8 Reasons I Prefer StumbleUpon
- ViperChill’s Guide to Stumbleupon – Basic information on how to get started there
- SEO 2.0 – 7 Unusual Ways to Use StumbleUpon
- Official eBay Inc. Press Release announcing eBay acquisition of StumbleUpon
Tips for getting around at StumbleUpon:
1. Get to any sub-category (by tag aka keyword) page by going to http://www.stumbleupon.com/tag/ and searching for the keyword phrase you’re interested in. You can also do a search from most pages of the site.
2. To read all the reviews of a page click on the second link that appears in brackets on any page linked from any stumblers blog
Handy StumbleUpon Quick Links:
My name is Hiren Ponkia and I am Freelance SEO Consultant India with strong background in search engine marketing, both paid and organic SEO services. I have found my deepest passion to be around the world of SEO, Social Media Marketing, Internet Marketing and Web Development Standards.
Thanks for a great read, I enjoyed this article. I like SU, it’s great for finding sites that may not show up in a regular search. I also like the traffic SU can send to site.
I use the stumble button a couple of times a week, and give thumbs up to the sites I like. I’ve never given a thumbs down, not sure I ever would, I think it’s bad karma to send out a negative signal.
I’ve seen those power stumblers around, but that’s not something I’m making any efforts to be, I’m happy just stumbling through stumble at my own pace.