StumbleUpon second windcustomer adventures, blogs and podcasting — by TDavid @ 9:50 am PST
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Back in 2004-2005, I used StumbleUpon (SU) almost every day. Then, somewhere around 750-1,000 rated stumbles I started seeing a lot of the same sites. A few browser upgrades later and I no longer installed/upgraded the StumbleUpon toolbar, nor have used it much.
Over the last week or so I’ve been reading about StumbleUpon being launched and seeing people write about it — some as if it’s brand new — when the company has been around for four years. This morning, Om Malik writes that he finds it “addictive.”
Om finishes his post with the following questions (emphasis mine):
Apparently, nearly 850,000 people are using the tool, and have reviewed, rated, and categorized over five million web pages since the service was first launched. Will it continue on this growth curve and become as valuable? What do you think?
As someone who used SU regularly for two plus years, created groups (including one of the largest blog groups on SU), I think without an infusion of some new, revolutionary feature SU will hit a wall as it did for me. It’s great for awhile, but there is a point where you run out of new/fresh stumbles. Admittedly, this takes a long, long time. Perhaps much longer than the average user will ever get through. Blogexplosion has the same problem in that the pool gets emptied and you start seeing a bunch of repeats.
Those who get bored like I did will need to take a SU break (mine lasted nearly six months) so that the fresh sites pool can fill up again. But during the period of fresh site discovery I agree with Om, it is addictive. Also, there is the issue of security when surfing the random sites. You have to be careful of what sites you stumble upon. This could prove to be a much bigger issue than exhausting the pool.
Before any SU fans object to my boredom take, just use the service regularly for a long time, say a year or more and then comment on this post. It’s fun in the beginning and you’ll explore some wild and wondrous pages/sites. Heck, this morning I did some quick stumbling and came across shavemyyeti (pictured above, actual size). Who hasn’t wanted to shave their Yeti?
The niche that SU targets is serendipitous surfing which was one of the initial draws to the web for me. There aren’t many services which focus on this so they might just be around another four years. Go ahead, install the Firefox extension and see what you think. How much will you use this? It can definitely be useful for bloggers for awhile, just keep your browser condom on.
Related Posts- Pirillo gets pitched for paid placement at StumbleUpon
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- Almost 4 years to reach 2,500 thumbs up pages on StumbleUpon
- Stumbling too fast
- Stumble no more?
It’s funny how long StumbleUpon has been around. They’ve been on the verge of success for years, but can never break thru. I’ve seen it pick-up several times and then drop back off only to pick-up again.
Comment by Randy Charles Morin — May 22, 2006 @ 3:47 pm PST
Check out the Alexa graphs. Very indicative.
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=max&size=large&compare_sites=&y=r&url=stumbleupon.com
Comment by Randy Charles Morin — May 22, 2006 @ 3:49 pm PST
Well, I wouldn’t hold much stock in what Alexa says, Randy, but otherwise I agree. This time they have some VC backing and some people are treating them like they are “new” which might change a few things.
Comment by TDavid — May 22, 2006 @ 4:10 pm PST
The problem is that SU just isn’t as useful as many other things that effectively provide the same service as well.
coComment / Del.ic.ious etc can all be used to surf random little known sites - but tend to actually give you better control (if you want it) and more importantly a better way of tracking back to those sites that you end up liking etc.
Unless SU can give something more than a random look into the Blogosphere I’d say its just going to remain an interesting paradigm that people tinker with everynow and again.
Comment by iiq374 — May 22, 2006 @ 6:09 pm PST
iiq734 — SU is about much more than blogs. coComment is for comments, so I’m not really seeing the serendipitious surfing aspect there (?). Del.icio.us is a more fair comparison although the del.icio.us UI is not as good as SU, IMO.
Comment by TDavid — May 22, 2006 @ 6:21 pm PST
coComment is for comments, which generally happen to be on blogs…
And by surfing the commentators, topics, tags, blogs etc –> you end up with an effect much like SU IMHO.
Comment by iiq374 — May 22, 2006 @ 8:12 pm PST
I found what you had to say about StumbleUpon very interesting. I was wondering if you have heard about a new tool that was inspired by StumbleUpon, it is called the ranDUMBizer. It is based on proprietary clustering technology from the Dumbfind search engine. “Search” when you know just what you’re looking for, “stumble” when you don’t, and “ranDUMBize” when you sort of know what you are looking for. Try using them in tandem, when you see a site you like in StumbleUpon, click the ranDUMBize bookmarklet and it will find something else that is related. The ranDUMBize helps you find things you are looking for, but don’t know how to search for. Very beta, but often very very interesting. dumbfind.com/randumbizer/
Comment by kt — May 24, 2006 @ 1:02 pm PST
[…] Most Hmm-worthy posts from May 20 - May 26, 2006 - Review: The Da Vinci Code AKA Richie Cunningham’s Unhappy Days (0) [may 20] - Ever wake up and think it’s a different day? (1) [may 21] - StumbleUpon second wind (7) [may 22] - Over 90% of blog comments are spam, reports Akismet (5) [may 23] - How to add Sphere It function based on number of words in post (2) [may 23] - Who will click to play video ads from Google or anybody else? (2) [may 23] - Create your own street and other signs online (2) [may 24] - Playing for up to $10 million dollars in Moola (4) [may 24] - *Not such a G’day World at TPN? Mick and Cam now just Cam (8) [may 25] - O’Reilly lawyers send cease-and-desist over Web 2.0 usage (4) [may 25] […]
Pingback by Make You Go Hmm: » Hmmcast #9: C-and-D stupidity, blog comment spam, serendipity — May 28, 2006 @ 9:56 am PST
[…] I had looked at stumbleupon briefly after a review by TDavid, but my alert level never rose above “ho hum” (yeah, I’ve got time to shave the Yeti)until this happened. Stumbleupon is sort of a combination of del.icio.us/digg/etc. and BlogExplosion. Like the former, you submit sites that interest you and tag them. Like the latter, the sites get queued up for semi-random viewing by people who have time on their hands. I guess I underestimated the magnitude of the latter. […]
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