Quick One- Are You Using StumbleUpon

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!)

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!)

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.

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.

Join me: http://barbarakb/stumbleupon.com

Try that again:

http://barbarakb.stumbleupon.com/

Try that again:

http://barbarakb.stumbleupon.com/

I’m not using it. But now I’m considering it.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

It’s good and I used it for a while, but it requires a download that I never quite got the hang of.