Helpful social media - StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon (stumbleupon.com)
is a content discovery tool on the
Internet considered far more effective
than web searches at delivering
online content best suited to
your individual tastes and interests.
Combining the weight of opinions by its users with the cold, hard precision of mathematics, StumbleUpon is a service that suggests Internet content to you based on your viewing history and interaction with other users and their content.
StumbleUpon was founded late in 2001 by Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith, Justin LaFrance and Eric Boyd while Camp was a student of Software Engineering at the University of Calgary. StumbleUpon was sold to eBay in 2007, but then bought back by its creators nearly two years later, making it a startup-based corporation once again.
Recently, StumbleUpon's chief rival site Digg underwent many cosmetic and functional changes, though according to general consensus the change has been for the worse.
How it works
Users browse content by visiting the StumbleUpon website and scanning through the recommendations provided in the "Discover" section of the page, voting the content up or down in popularity. If you aren't interested in using it by way of the website, toolbars and applications have been built for all modern browsers and mobile phones.
Following a suggestion reduces the StumbleUpon page to a subtle toolbar at the top of the browsing screen, with controls to view and rate the content within — in this case users browse by clicking on the "Stumble!" button on the toolbar.
StumbleUpon employs a system of "collaborative filtering" that takes ratings that users award to content and combines them with compatibility factors in play based on how closely you or the content relate to other users and/or their likes and content. The more you use it, the more specific the criteria will become — as it gets a better idea of the type of content you tend to enjoy, StumbleUpon gets better and better at providing that content to you.
Further, your history of likes and stumbles can be accessed from a profile page, and you can interact with and follow your friends or people that have the same interests as you on the network. And of course, integration with Facebook, Twitter and more are provided for users to share their stumblings.
Why it's useful (or not)
Like many social tools, StumbleUpon has its strengths and its weaknesses. If what you're doing is looking for a good way to spend some time aimlessly on the Internet, there is no better way to ensure that what you see and do is of interest to you.
However, if you are in a situation where you need to use the Internet efficiently (say, to research an essay you're writing), StumbleUpon is not going to be helpful. For that reason, avoid it if you have some serious work to do — it is not helpful to be assaulted by images of kittens or adorable endangered species while trying to research a topic for a paper.
Combining the weight of opinions by its users with the cold, hard precision of mathematics, StumbleUpon is a service that suggests Internet content to you based on your viewing history and interaction with other users and their content.
StumbleUpon was founded late in 2001 by Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith, Justin LaFrance and Eric Boyd while Camp was a student of Software Engineering at the University of Calgary. StumbleUpon was sold to eBay in 2007, but then bought back by its creators nearly two years later, making it a startup-based corporation once again.
Recently, StumbleUpon's chief rival site Digg underwent many cosmetic and functional changes, though according to general consensus the change has been for the worse.
How it works
Users browse content by visiting the StumbleUpon website and scanning through the recommendations provided in the "Discover" section of the page, voting the content up or down in popularity. If you aren't interested in using it by way of the website, toolbars and applications have been built for all modern browsers and mobile phones.
Following a suggestion reduces the StumbleUpon page to a subtle toolbar at the top of the browsing screen, with controls to view and rate the content within — in this case users browse by clicking on the "Stumble!" button on the toolbar.
StumbleUpon employs a system of "collaborative filtering" that takes ratings that users award to content and combines them with compatibility factors in play based on how closely you or the content relate to other users and/or their likes and content. The more you use it, the more specific the criteria will become — as it gets a better idea of the type of content you tend to enjoy, StumbleUpon gets better and better at providing that content to you.
Further, your history of likes and stumbles can be accessed from a profile page, and you can interact with and follow your friends or people that have the same interests as you on the network. And of course, integration with Facebook, Twitter and more are provided for users to share their stumblings.
Why it's useful (or not)
Like many social tools, StumbleUpon has its strengths and its weaknesses. If what you're doing is looking for a good way to spend some time aimlessly on the Internet, there is no better way to ensure that what you see and do is of interest to you.
However, if you are in a situation where you need to use the Internet efficiently (say, to research an essay you're writing), StumbleUpon is not going to be helpful. For that reason, avoid it if you have some serious work to do — it is not helpful to be assaulted by images of kittens or adorable endangered species while trying to research a topic for a paper.
