Chris Brogan: Quick One- Are You Using StumbleUpon
Johan Myrberger
· 1 year ago
Not using StumbleUpon that active. Have submitted some of my own posts, and noticed that it seemed to be an easy win for a short burst of traffic increase.
When I have "stumbled around" I have not seen that many interesting sites. Either that's me and my interests, or I could set some filters better?
Joanna Young
· 1 year ago
Yes, to bookmark & review - find it a good way to say 'thanks' to bloggers.
Don't use it to find stuff by stumbling, but would check about 1 in 10 of the recommendations of my SU friends.
Other way I use it is to 'meet' people who've stumbled my stuff (a great way to meet readers who don't want to comment) and/or who share similar interests.
Joanna
Colin Walker
· 1 year ago
Signed up but don't use it - anything that wants me to install a toolbar is a no-no I'm afraid.
Avi
· 1 year ago
well, just to find interesting sites, and little bit for traffic, but Stumble traffic isn't so...
Rowan Manahan
· 1 year ago
I haven't found anything of real note using SU. Fun and quirks, but nothing that I've subscribed to or felt the need to blog about. The only reason I keep using it is to break out of the 'my internet' box.
Popurls.com tends to be more useful and of much broader subject reach than SU as a collated pile of stuff that the wider users of the net are curious about. When I'm using it, I now find myself jumping past the Digg and Reddit lists and looking at some of the other feeds first.
Paul Parkinson
· 1 year ago
I use SU to find interesting stuff. These days however, it seems (to me at least) that the signal to noise ratio has declined. Perhaps I spend too much time there and I keep getting repeats (fix it please SU). Also good for posting podcast updates from time to time.
Daniel Glifberg
· 1 year ago
Using StumbleUpon randomly, however it tends to grow more and more on me.
As some other people mention currently the value of sites that I get to when pressing "stumble" is limited. However I believe that is mostly due to too wide areas.
I also put some home to the friends functions that helps to get to sites that that are positively rated by trusted friends.
Youlay
· 1 year ago
I did use that. Very easy to share what you like (as FF plugin). Not sure how many people still use it. But also it is very addictive because anytime I clicked (sometimes accidentally) their logo I went to some random site which was really interesting. Those sites I saw - all of them were worthy to visit, so it's a good source, but then it makes you sit longer "just browsing".
Fredrik Johnsen
· 1 year ago
I second Johan's view. I've also submitted some of my own posts, and that generated traffic. However, I don't use it that actively, but that might change.
They should have some way to import friends and followers from other social networks. I'm getting a bit sick of adding the same people everytime I sign up for something new.
Nicole Simon
· 1 year ago
I actually love Stumble upon. It has brought back the magic for me to the net, I was missing since URL Roulette got out of business.
It does help probably that I have wide interest in many things plus love the social media stuff.
Get yourself a lot of related topics to start with and just stumble away. :o)
I use it as much as possible, but I do find the choices a bit overwhelming sometimes when I'm looking for something specific.
However, for promoting my own websites, it has proven to be a useful tool. If someone Stumbles an article I've written, I see an immediate spike.
Chris Miller
· 1 year ago
It seems that I get the same hits when I try to stumble and I imagine that others get the same result. I try not to put my own pages out there, but an interesting theory. I guess the newer sites that get stumbled get sent more often at first?
Do we know their algorithm?
Jane Quigley
· 1 year ago
I've just started seriously Stumble'g - especially after Mahalo added SU support to their toolbar. Makes it easy to post with a shortcut!
Matthew Ebel
· 1 year ago
Nope! I signed up for it, but I just don't use it. Probably because I've never encountered any sites because of it, so I don't really see the value. I know others have, but I haven't.
Mike Keliher
· 1 year ago
I've never used StumbleUpon - neither for sharing nor finding. But I have seen and heard great examples of it driving awesome amounts of traffic.
Sonia Simone
· 1 year ago
It can drive an awful lot of traffic--I get quite a lot of traffic daily from two big Stumbles of individual posts--but the traffic tends to be pretty ephemeral. Still, if I look at the logs, I do get some Stumblers who stick around.
As a user, I enjoy SU for killing a few minutes and finding weird and interesting stuff. Every once in awhile I create a "StumbleUpon Friday" post that aggregates stuff I especially liked.
Rachel Luxemburg
· 1 year ago
After a recent incident where Stumblers brought our home network to a crawl (an image on hubby's personal web server got huge Stumble trafic) I decided to take a closer look at StumbleUpon. I'm rslux there, same handle as on Twitter.
I'm still undecided about it. On the one hand, it's interesting and clearly it can drive a lot of traffic, on the other hand, it feels both overly complicated and very quiet (I only have a couple of friends so far). I think, like Twitter, StumbleUpon is a tool that you need to use it for a little while to really get a feel for.
communicatrix
· 1 year ago
Used SU extensively to find stuff, clear my brain, etc in the beginning. Now I use it almost exclusively to point out things of interest. Other tools: Twitter, del.icio.us, Tumblr, Clipmarks. Don't use Furl much any more. And outside of Stumbling my main page (which I now wish I could undo), I never Stumble my own stuff.
I've gotten some quality traffic from it, although that wasn't my intention. But I've been on a relatively long time (Mar 06) and have a huge stumbleblog of stuff. I think that may give me some cred others who just stumble their own stuff wouldn't have.
Mike Desjardins
· 1 year ago
I use it the same way that I use the TV when I'm bored... I channel surf. When I've caught up with all my RSS feeds (it happens, once in a while), and read everything on Digg and Reddit, and nothing is in any of my Inboxes, my information addiction still needs to be fed. That's when I turn to SU.
Tamar Weinberg
· 1 year ago
I'm a big StumbleUpon user. Occasionally, I'll "channel surf." Often, my usage is for content discovery and for finding ideas or getting inspiration.
I personally find that if you're seeing duplicates or content that's noisy, you just need to drill down to what you like by subscribing to certain tags or categories.
Bob Uva
· 1 year ago
I just signed up for StumbleUpon the other day. It seemed a bit random but actually the first page that I stumbled upon was very nice. I had listed history as one of my interests and had a page that with online versions, easy to read as well, of classic texts. As Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was one of them, I immediately went to look at it since I'm intrigued by his broad perspective on economics -- not at all the cliche stuff that everyone thinks is all he's about. Anyway, I haven't used it much, but StumbleUpon looks promising.
Nicole Simon
· 1 year ago
You need to make sure to add some friends first, as you will be stumbleing their submissions and thumbs up.
In the beginning you can just look around a bit radomly and connect, they are not that meaningful "will you be my friend" friends.
After a while, add others and you will see a huge diversity of content (dont forget to add tags of your interest!)
1389
· 1 year ago
I use StumbleUpon quite a lot (see 1389ad, for meeting like-minded people, publicizing stories from our blog and from other blogs, for bookmarking links for future reference, for sending items to friends to ask for their feedback, and for discovering sites that I would not have found on my own.
As with any social news site, it takes quite a bit of practice to make it work for you. I submit vastly more pages from other blogs and websites than I do from our blog, and I also make it a point to give a thumbs-up, and often a review, to as many deserving sites as I can find.
BarbaraKB
· 1 year ago
Ditto to tamar and 1389. I am not as heavy a user as those two but I find it's a fun bookmark for sites I like. Also, I not only find similar sites but similar folks who like what I stumble. Really need to subscribe to tags and categories to get full extent. Tamar describes it as going deep. I also describe it as a *visual* search engine. Thus, No better search on web for finding interesting design and photo and graphic sites.
It's good and I used it for a while, but it requires a download that I never quite got the hang of. Eventually, I stopped keeping up with it, but I may go back. Due to time constraints, I decided to limit my social networking to a regular top five: Twitter, Facebook, MyBlogLog, Digg, and Technorati. These work well for me. I sometimes branch out, but these are the ones I use consistently.
Kristen
· 1 year ago
I use Stumble Upon religiously, more than any other social networking/bookmarking site. I have seen the best results, the best finds and have met the best people. It is by far the best in social media.
Daniele Rossi
· 1 year ago
A cool thing that recently happened to me was I recevied an audio comment from a new listener to my (rather obscure and very niche) podcast, "Stuttering is Cool" (http://www.stutteringiscool.com).
Imagine my surprise and deligth when I listened to the audio comment for the first time where the listener explains that he found my site through SU.
I know it's a coincidence but pretty cool!
Daniel Schildt
· 1 year ago
I have been 4 years since I created account to StumbleUpon and while I haven't recently used it more than little bit, it's still part of my online world. Actually, things look like SU would have more usage now because it has much more users than before. I think that when I got account there were just tens of thousads users but when you now look at the front page it shows more than 4,4 million of users.
All Comments
When I have "stumbled around" I have not seen that many interesting sites. Either that's me and my interests, or I could set some filters better?
Don't use it to find stuff by stumbling, but would check about 1 in 10 of the recommendations of my SU friends.
Other way I use it is to 'meet' people who've stumbled my stuff (a great way to meet readers who don't want to comment) and/or who share similar interests.
Joanna
Popurls.com tends to be more useful and of much broader subject reach than SU as a collated pile of stuff that the wider users of the net are curious about. When I'm using it, I now find myself jumping past the Digg and Reddit lists and looking at some of the other feeds first.
As some other people mention currently the value of sites that I get to when pressing "stumble" is limited. However I believe that is mostly due to too wide areas.
I also put some home to the friends functions that helps to get to sites that that are positively rated by trusted friends.
They should have some way to import friends and followers from other social networks. I'm getting a bit sick of adding the same people everytime I sign up for something new.
It does help probably that I have wide interest in many things plus love the social media stuff.
Get yourself a lot of related topics to start with and just stumble away. :o)
my profile if you like to get some ideas for tags of interest:
http://nixande.stumbleupon.com/
However, for promoting my own websites, it has proven to be a useful tool. If someone Stumbles an article I've written, I see an immediate spike.
Do we know their algorithm?
As a user, I enjoy SU for killing a few minutes and finding weird and interesting stuff. Every once in awhile I create a "StumbleUpon Friday" post that aggregates stuff I especially liked.
I'm rslux there, same handle as on Twitter.
I'm still undecided about it. On the one hand, it's interesting and clearly it can drive a lot of traffic, on the other hand, it feels both overly complicated and very quiet (I only have a couple of friends so far). I think, like Twitter, StumbleUpon is a tool that you need to use it for a little while to really get a feel for.
I've gotten some quality traffic from it, although that wasn't my intention. But I've been on a relatively long time (Mar 06) and have a huge stumbleblog of stuff. I think that may give me some cred others who just stumble their own stuff wouldn't have.
I personally find that if you're seeing duplicates or content that's noisy, you just need to drill down to what you like by subscribing to certain tags or categories.
In the beginning you can just look around a bit radomly and connect, they are not that meaningful "will you be my friend" friends.
After a while, add others and you will see a huge diversity of content (dont forget to add tags of your interest!)
As with any social news site, it takes quite a bit of practice to make it work for you. I submit vastly more pages from other blogs and websites than I do from our blog, and I also make it a point to give a thumbs-up, and often a review, to as many deserving sites as I can find.
Join me: http://barbarakb/stumbleupon.com
http://barbarakb.stumbleupon.com/
Imagine my surprise and deligth when I listened to the audio comment for the first time where the listener explains that he found my site through SU.
I know it's a coincidence but pretty cool!