This being Friday, I hadn’t planned on writing another post. I had a few lined up for the day and that MIT book I’m working on is staring at me.
But I was stumbled upon again—Successful Blog was stumbled upon last week and now this. I couldn’t help myself. My famous curiosity kicked in, and I had to check it out. Once I did, I figured you might want to play with Stumble Upon over the weekend. So here I am writing this post . . .
Stumble Upon is a more user-friendly, more organized, more social–yeah, that’s what I mean–a more social, social bookmarking tool. For the web pro, del.cio.us has an interface that offers the credibility and appeal of an indexing page. For the rest of us, Stumble Upon has that “Frosted Mini-Wheat” appeal–it’s visually pleasing and fun enough for the kid in me, but sophisticated and organized to satisfy the adult as well. For the social butterfly or the college kid this one wins hands down for it’s personal interaction features.
The time it takes to get up and running on Stumble Upon is short and sweet, and a quick check at Technorati shows that it already has 1500 users linked to it. I think this is the next sleeper hit. Well, just look at the difference. The developers have met most of the problems people have with using its competition.
You can edit the backgrounds, pick the categories, and do random searches to “stumble upon” sites under tagged themes. It’s addictive and fun. You can also meet people and share what you’ve found–if you so choose. More than that, it’s much nicer to look at and easier to find things.
If it’s not what you’re looking for, it might be the perfect thing for that friend or relative who finds del.cio.us overwhelming or visually intimidating.
Here’s what some of the big magazines said about Stumble Upon.
Give it a try. You might like it. I did, but then I stumble a lot even without it.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
I was stumbled upon as a result of my Google Maps as Art getting dugg. I checked out the site, and installed the toolbar on my home computer, but I haven’t really played with it since then. I pretty much had forgotten about it. Thanks for the reminder – I’ll have to check it out again.
Hi Jennifer,
It’s kind of fun, but you need some time with it to get the hang of stumbling. Glad it was useful to put it here as a reminder. Congratulations on getting dugg.
Google Maps as Art. I’ll have to check that out.
Liz
Uhm, does this mean I’ve been stumbled upon?
(I know, I know, bad link creation, but I DID use rel=”nofollow” ;-))
Cool, thanks for the heads-up. I know the purists will want to shoot me, but if I was in charge of del.icio.us, I couldn’t handle their interface. Must.have.style!
Hi Ara,
I think it does mean you’ve been stumbled upon. How did you find it? Did you stumble upon yourself? 🙂 You’re such fun!
Liz
Hi Chris,
I’m with you. Not only did I grow up calling pink and blue “baby colors,” but also I have real trouble reading them.
Liz
I’ve just got a bad vibe about Stumble Upon. When someone with the Stumble Upon toolbar installed visits a site it leaves a hit on the logs which is a bit too close to referrer log spam for my liking. Someone can correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think other toolbars use that technique.
Hi Anthony,
From this end I don’t see any difference in what happens between a Stumble Upon visit and a del.icio.us visit. The referral info is carried on the referrers plate not on my site records. As the Stumble Upon user I can choose whether to to share what I’ve found and like or not, the same as with del.icio.us. So I’m not sure I understand your concern. Can you tell me more?
Liz
Liz,
I’ve got no clue how I was stumbled upon or if I stumbled upon myself. I just went to the site and typed in my name. It just looks like search engine results to me. That’s why I was wondering if I was “stumbled upon” whatever that means.
Hi Ara,
I noticed I was “Stumbled Upon” because it showed up in my stats that someone had gotten here that way–twice. What you did was use “Stumble Upon” to do a search that’s as totally safe as using Google the regular way. You’re cool.
smiles,
Liz
My concern is that when someone has the toolbar installed and visits a site it shows up in the referrer logs indicating to the webmaster/blogmaster that a visitor had come to the site via link when in fact they may have just typed the address into their address bar.
Hi Anthony,
Why would you think it would work like that? del.icios.us doesn’t cause that concern, and the interface appears to work the same way.
Liz
Thanks also for the heads up – another place I never knew about.
Looks promising but I think I’ll need a good hour or two to really dig deep and look into it and yep, even though del.icio.us is #1 for most, they sure could do with a design – any design actually will do 😉
Hi Martin,
I’ve been playing with it this weekend. I just leave it closed and use the menu on my toolbar. When I see something I want to keep, I pull down to the “I like it.” on the menu and and a short screen comes up letting me tag the entry. Not that much different than putting it in a favorites list, except that it’s on a separate plate so to speak.
Liz
Liz,
Yeah, I’m still on the fence with this one – places like these need a certain mass to work.
so far, I only see myself using the tag search – http://www.stumbleupon.com/tag/ – to search for other like-minded sites or topics. But that’s more or less what Technorati/del.icio.us is doing right now … but with the spam included.
And that’s the problem: as soon as it reaches a certain level of acceptance/usage these places start drowning in spam.
Martin,
I don’t know that I’ll ever use the recommendation feature of the program. Usually if everyone likes it, I don’t. I’m just not focus group material. But I find it a great mechanism for holding favorites in an organized fashion without being clumsy and on a long thin menu–and my eyes just can’t take del.icio.us for longer than a quick “borrowing” of what others are looking at. So I’ll use them for that and Stumble Upon for my filing cabinet.
That’s my battle plan.
Liz
Hey Liz,
They do that do it like that so that when you look through your statistics you might click on the link and visit their site. It also helps for their incoming links if people publish their referer stats on their blogs. It’s a tactic mostly used by porn sites.
More info on referrer log spam:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/articles/referer_spam/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referer_spam
Thanks Anthony, for the tips and the links.
Obviously this is an education that you’re giving me.
But isn’t that the same risk run as what del.icio.us does?
Liz
I’m not really sure how del.icio.us works. Just know that when someone with the Stumble Upon toolbar installed it records a hit on the referrer logs as if it was a hit via a link which seems pretty dodgy to me.
Hi Anthony,
As a user of both–for a day at each at least–they appear to work the same way and to run the same risk of being abused. The long list of high class mags that wrote great reviews seems to speak well for it in my book. Both off the option not to open your finds to the world. And every webmaster/blogowner has the option not to follow strange links.
Don’t think you’ve been a pain by bringing up this conversation. I breathe curiosity and I really like to know lots about everything. Those links you left were well worth investigating and I may return to them for a future post.
You’ve added a whole new dimension to this conversation.
I appreciate that Anthony. That’s why I’m so for making and keeping this a community blog.
Liz