Virtually Here

I could write pages upon pages about StumbleUpon and judging from the popularity this site has seen (over 5,000,000 members) odds are you are either already a subscriber or at least know of it. If not - the short description of Stumble is that it’s a site that learns what sites you like based on your own ratings and it also allows you to find sites that like-minded members enjoy.

The long description of Stumble can still somewhat be summarized into four main points;

a)  Discovering sites are based on your own personal site preferences or you can view sites that other like-minded members are enjoying.

b)  You need a tool installed in your browser that will allow you to ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ sites that you come across (TiVo much?).

c) Low-quality/traffic sites are filtered out. As sites grow out of date (example: you search for “Lollapalooza schedule”. Odds are you want to see the current or next year’s schedule and not the one for 2006. As sites becomes less visited they also disappear from your search hits).

d) On-line community. You can interact with people through the site’s many forums and even find people that are geographically near you and with similar interests. Tell people about sites you enjoy, get recommendations - and who knows meet up for a cup of Java. No, not the programming language…I mean actual coffee.

I dislike the need to install any kind of tool with a passion but I must admit I’ve had my Stumble add-on in my Firefox browser for longer than I can remember and even though I’m not the most frequent ‘thumber’ when I go to a site I do enjoy doing it from time to time and going back to Stumble to see what sites I am getting recommended.

It’s a great site and tool and the forums are very active.  If you have your own blog Stumble is also a very good way to drive new traffic to your site.

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