Learn How To Use StumbleUpon

Project TRAFFIC is well and truly under way. I’m working hard like a hard working thing trying to build new sources of traffic for my existing web real estate. One of the biggest new sources for me is social bookmarking and as far as I’m concerned the daddy of social bookmarking sites is StumbleUpon.

Having never really had much to do with social bookmarking in the past it was quite new to me and I’m still learning, however one of the first things I wanted to do was built up some friends to share stumbles with. FaceBook is a social networking website, I’ve got quite a few friends on there so I figured they’d be reasonably tech savvy so I invited them along for the ride. The responses I got were a little surprising “What the hell is StumbleUpon?”, “What does it do?”, “Never heard of it?”. Out of over 100 invites only 3 people had ever heard of StumbleUpon never mind used it.

The Difference Between StumbleUpon And FaceBook
What I find strange is that so many FaceBook users, people who are aware of social networking have never heard of StumbleUpon, social bookmarking. Then again why should I be surprised, it’s very easy to drift into your own world online and assume that everybody has the same knowledge as you. I remember the first time I guided my mum through buying cheaper books on Amazon and the look of amazement on her face. Surely everybody knows about Amazon? Apparently not. The same is very much true for StumbleUpon, whilst social networking is now mainstream (thanks to the media), social bookmarking is not and is still very much confined to the world of techies, webmasters and internet nerds. It’s a shame, because once you get started with StumbleUpon it can open up a whole world of more interesting websites to you.

My Beginners Guide To Using StumbleUpon
So if you’ve never heard of StumbleUpon then this is the place to start. StumbleUpon is a social bookmarking service, it allows you to vote for websites (positive or negative) and bookmark them, just like what you would normally do with your browser. However by keeping your list of bookmarked websites online you can access them wherever you are using the internet. As well as simply bookmarking StumbleUpon allows you to share bookmarks with your friends and even more interesting, by using the “Stumble” button to be taken to a random website that other people have voted for. It is this stumbling that allows you to discover new and interesting areas of the internet.

Getting Started With StumbleUpon

1. Create yourself a StumbleUpon account by signing up at this page, it’s a very simple process and to date I’ve never received any spam from signing up - StumbleUpon Sign Up. The categories you choose will be the categories from which random websites will be chosen when you hit the Stumble button.

2. Download the StumbleUpon toolbar available from the link (A Firefox and Internet Explorer version is available). I’m the first to say that I hate browser tool bars but the Stumble bar is clean, simple to use and very much to the point. I’ve been using it for over a week now with a packet sniffer and it doesn’t seem to do anything “naughty”.

3. Once you have your toolbar installed you can start stumbling. The left most button on the toolbar is the “Stumble” button, this will take you to a random website depending on your category choices. Even in the short time I’ve used it I’ve found more interesting pages than in the last 2 months of general surfing.

4. To vote for a page you can use the thumbs up and thumbs down icons next to the stumble button. If you are the first person to stumble a page you will be invited to write a short review about what you have found. If you’re not the first then you vote will simply be added to the other people who have voted for it. If you do want to write an extra review then you can do so by using the speech bubble icon (2 over to the right).

5. The favourites button takes you to your list of bookmarked (voted you like it) web pages. By default this only shows pages that you have written a review for but it also possible to view all of your bookmarked pages. Of course if you’re using a computer that doesn’t have the toolbar installed you can access this same list by logging in to your account on the StumbleUpon website.

6. The final think to look at is the friends button. This takes you to your list of bookmarking buddies. When you first start there is the option of inviting friends from several contact lists including Outlook, GMail and FaceBook. Users with more friends will get more from the whole StumbleUpon experience.

So from now on you vote for pages as and when you come across them, any pages with positive votes will be included in the list of pages that can be displayed when somebody hits the random Stumble button. In order for your votes to carry more weight you need to participate actively in the community, this means voting (positive and negative) on lots of pages not and not just your own. It’s also worth noting that you can never have too many friends! As I said in the first place this is all a little new to me as well, but so far my StumbleUpon experience has been a positive one.

Now you know how to do it your first job is to give a positive vote for this post!

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