What Is StumbleUpon?
StumbleUpon is among many of the sites in the category of Social Media/Social Bookmarking which includes Reddit, Digg, and Delicious. The best explanation to describe StumbleUpon can be found on the website’s splash page. Before you enter, you will learn that “StumbleUpon is a giant collection of the best pages on the internet. You tell us your interests. We recommend great websites, photos and videos. Simple.” Indeed, it is that simple. You will find all of the internet’s hidden treasures – the sort of things that you are lucky to stumble upon that may never find with Google's limited Organic Search without having to look beyond one website.
Brief History of StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon was founded in November 2001 by Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith, and two other friends. They came up with 5 or 6 ideas for different products before settling upon StumbleUpon. In an interview with the BBC, Garrett Camp mentioned that when the site reached half a million registered users did he feel that the site became more of a career.
- The site caught the interest of angel investors, where it landed $1.2 million in funding and then in 2005, $1.5 million in seed funding.
- In 2006, Garrett Camp and Geoff Smith moved to San Francisco and launched StumbleUpon Video
- In 2007, StumbleThru launched, allowing stumbling content on specific sites like YouTube and Flickr
- In May 2007, StumbleUpon was bought by eBay for $75 million (5.5 years after its initial founding)
- In 2008, traffic dropped by around 70% in comparison to the previous year (according to ComScore)
- In 2009, it launches su.pr, bringing in the toolbar and allowing users to stumble directly from the site
- A couple of months later, StumbleUpon raises Series A funding (rumored to be at $29 million), which is folded into buying back the company from eBay. Garrett Camp and Geoff Smith buy back the company (along with various investors) for a rumored $25 million
- Late in 2009, StumbleUpon introduces the “New” StumbleUpon, which allows stumbling without signing up
- In 2010, Marc Leibowitz leaves Google and joins StumbleUpon as the VP of Business Development and Marketing
- In 2011, StumbleUpon raises $17 million in Series B funding along with reports of the site generating 800 recommendations a month
- The site reports 20 million users and 1 billion stumbles a month
- On October 24, 2011, StumbleUpon made changes to the site by deleting their user-generated content, HTML blogging, standalone blog posts, and ability to photoblog. All their previous blog posts converted from HTML to plain text and all photos were deleted. This was done to focus their efforts on their recommendation engine rather than expand to include blogging platforms.
How Can I Sign Up?
StumbleUpon loves to keep things simple, and their sign up process is incredibly easy.
If you have Facebook, you can sign up using your Facebook account without even needing to create a separate StumbleUpon account.
If you want to sign up with your email, all you need to give is your name, email address and birthday. Choose a password, and you’re good to go.
How Does It Work?
To find content that will suit your interests, StumbleUpon asks you questions to get to know you. It can then recommend websites, photos, videos and other media that will be perfect for you. Then you being the process they call "Stumbling". That's when the real fun begins and before you know it you're hooked!
Collaborative Filtering '
The process that StumbleUpon uses to cater to you is called collaborative filtering. As a user and a human, you are collaborating with StumbleUpon’s search engine mechanisms, helping it to learn more about you. The more you engage, the better results you will find.
Feedback
When browsing through content on StumbleUpon, you can offer thumbs up or thumbs down responses to the various articles, photos and videos you see. Through collaborative filtering, StumbleUpon takes your data and stores it as part of your personal profile, using your feedback to determine what you might like and dislike in the future.
Personal information
StumbleUpon will also offer pages to you based on personal and demographic information that you provide in your profile. If your friends or people with similar interests like a certain page, you may see that in your feed as well. There are also other methods that StumbleUpon uses to connect people with content, but it will not reveal all of its methods. One can assume that they have a “secret sauce” they do not want to give up.
If you love new and interesting internet content that is totally catered to your personality and preferences, try StumbleUpon today! It is totally free, so you have absolutely nothing to lose.
How does Stumbling Drive Traffic?
Anytime you bookmark your pages and posts to StumbleUpon, you will get a lot more targeted traffic from that 1 traffic source than all the other people put collectively. When it comes to driving traffic to your web site or blog, StumbleUpon is a "beast" !!
So if you haven't started to do so, insert a social bookmarking to site or blog ( I use Shareaholic and if you notice visitors can share to 20 different sites with my Shareaholic - I used to have 40 options but I settle on the top 20 for now). Having that social media sharing addon on your site will get your articles or blog posts added to sites like StumbleUpon which is a backlink beast !
Don't Forget about SEO
Does Search engine optimization scare the trousers off of you? It's not a surprise. A good deal of people are concerned of it. It's complex. It's constantly changing and modifying the rules.
But SEO can be beautiful when it serves you right. It can provide your site floods of targeted traffic. It can assist you improve your product sales. It costs a heckuva great deal much less than a lot of other net advertising and marketing strategies. It's measurable, it is testable, and whilst the beast is not always predictable, it can be tameable - if you use the proper strategy.
Need some SEO Aid
If you really don't have time to dedicate many hrs spend a goog thirty day period (at minimum) to your Search engine optimization, get some support, SEO Plugins, read upon on LSI, keyword density, do your keyword tool searches on adsense. If you don't have time to discover the ins and outs, the heritage, and don't have time to different reality from the enormous amounts of on the internet Search engine optimization fiction, get some support. If you prefer to emphasis on your core organization and want the traffic to just show up...yep....you need some SEO aid from a third party.
Some enterprise house owners do their own Seo effectively or employ the service of a total time Search engine optimization man. But people who hire an skilled Search engine marketing business typically get the gain of a staff of pros doing work to preserve the targeted traffic coming by means of various Search engine optimisation approaches. Yes, the policies can adjust but the authorities know how to minimize the discomfort and when the beast strikes, they know how to speedily quit your website from bleeding money.
Read more on Social Bookmarking
What is Digg? Driving Traffic from Digg
15 Most Popular Social Bookmarking Websites – July 2013
What is Social Bookmarking 101?
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