StumbleUpon

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

StumbleUpon Toolbar

StumbleUpon Toolbar in Firefox 2.0
Author:	Geoff Smith^[1]
Latest release:	3.04^[2]
Platform:	Internet Explorer, Firefox
Use:	Web site ranking and discovery
Website:	http://www.stumbleupon.com/

StumbleUpon is a web browser plugin that allows its users to discover and rate webpages, photos, videos, and news articles. These webpages are typically presented when the user clicks the Stumble button on the browser's toolbar. StumbleUpon chooses which new webpage to display based on the user's ratings of previous pages, ratings by his/her friends, and by the ratings of users with similar interests. i.e. it is a recommendation system which uses peer and social networking principles. There is also one-click blogging built in as well. Users can rate, or choose not to rate, any webpage with a thumbs up or thumbs down, and clicking the Stumble button resembles "channel-surfing" the web. Toolbar versions exist for Firefox, Mozilla Application Suite and Internet Explorer.

1 Foundation
2 Service details
3 Advertising
4 Community
5 Video
6 StumbleVideo for Wii
7 See also
8 External links
9 References

[edit] Foundation

StumbleUpon was founded by Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith, who is president of StumbleUpon, and Justin LaFrance during their time in post-graduate school. The idea of creating a company was established before the content, of the 5-6 ideas for products, StumbleUpon was chosen. Garrett describes in a BBC interview the moment for him in which he felt the company had taken off; "When we passed the half a million mark (in registered users) it seemed more real." The popularity of the software attracted Silicon Valley investor Brad O'Neill to take notice of the company and extending an invitation to California for the founders. Garrett Camp and Geoff Smith now reside in California and Justin LaFrance resides in Canada.^[3]

[edit] Service details

StumbleUpon uses collaborative filtering (an automated process combining human opinions with machine learning of personal preference) to create virtual communities of like-minded websurfers. Rating websites updates a personal profile (a blog-style record of rated sites) and generates peer networks of websurfers linked by common interest. These social networks coordinate the distribution of web content, such that users 'stumble upon' pages explicitly recommended by friends and peers. Users rate sites by way of a simple thumbs up, thumbs down selection on the StumbleUpon toolbar, and can optionally leave additional commentary for the site's review page, which also appears on the user's blog. This social content discovery approach automates the "word-of-mouth" referral of peer-approved websites and simplifies web navigation. Stumblers (as users of this community dub themselves) also have the ability to rate and review each others' blogs as well as join interest groups, which are community forums for specific topics. Users can post comments much like a discussion board in these groups and post websites that apply to the specific topic.

[edit] Advertising

StumbleUpon uses knowledge of user preferences to deliver targeted advertising. A small proportion of the 'stumbles' users come across (typically less than 2%) are sponsored pages matching their topics of interest. For example, those signed up for photography will occasionally see an ad related to photography. Such content is vetted by humans for "quality and relevance" prior to its delivery. Paid accounts (referred to as "Sponsors") have a variety of options, including the ability to turn off such advertising.

[edit] Community

In July 2006, StumbleUpon had 1,000,000 users.^[4] According to the About StumbleUpon page StumbleUpon has over 2 million members as of March 16, 2007.

[edit] Video

On December 13, 2006, StumbleUpon launched their StumbleVideo site at http://video.stumbleupon.com/. The new site allows users without a toolbar to "stumble" through all the videos that toolbar users have submitted and rate them using an AJAX interface. The site currently aggregates videos from YouTube, Google Video, and MySpace Videos.