StumbleUpon: 6 Things To Remember.
You’ve pretty likely heard of stumbleupon. It’s a great social bookmarking tool that helps you stumble across cool webpages. If you haven’t signed up Go Ahead And Do It.
Now, down to Business. These are some things that I really want to remind people of when using StumbleUpon.
1. There is a thumbs up, and a thumbs down.
Ok, I’m all for giving somebody a thumbs up, but I’m also all for giving them a thumbs down. If you don’t like what you see, tell stumbleupon so! This can also help to keep other people from seeing it… if it’s really garbage, don’t let SU get cluttered!
2. Report sites.
In the tools menu there’s a little option called “Report Last Stumble“. Use it. “Last Stumble” means your most recent stumble. If you happen to hit the “Stumble!” button before reporting, just go to the review page of the site and there’s a flagging option down in the sidebar.
3. Tag and review.
There’s two options in your toolbar that you probably don’t use a lot of. Tag and review are made for if you really really liked the page, or if you thought it should have a bit more broad of reach or whatever. You can leave negative reviews, and sometimes these can be helpful, so go ahead and do so. If you think the site deserves more reach, give it extra tags! It’ll reach more people that way.
4. StumbleThru
There’s a little icon up there with a couple of arrows that you can use to stumble through certain websites. If you’re in the mood for video, but don’t want to use their Stumble Video function, here’s an option! There’s YouTube and Metacafe in there.
5. Channels
There’s a menu on your toolbar that, right now probably says “All” on it. This is a really handy feature actually; it lets you stumble within certain interests. So basically, if you’re in the mood for canoeing, you can just stumble through that.
6. Groups
This has nothing to do with the toolbar really, but groups are a great way to interact with people. Basically like StumbleUpon’s version of forums.
(Thanks Karl!)Bonus Tip: Search
If you click that “All” tab again, you’ll notice there’s a “Search…” option. Use that for stumbling withing specific tags; It’s a handy alternative to the stumble categories.
Alright, that’s everything. Now, go out and enjoy your stumbleupon experience!
I spend a trementous amount of time in Stumble. We find by going true,many site that of interest. I would like that there be more French and German site, covering sciences of all sort. (2 to 4 hours daily)
Keep on Stumbling
Here’s what I don’t get about the thumbs-down feature of SU: If, for example, I see a comic strip that I don’t find very funny, and I give it a thumbs-down, will SU use my thumbs-down to “learn” my sense of humor, and eventually figure out every nuance of what I prefer in an internet comic… or will SU simply assume that I don’t like comic strips very much? I pretty much never use the thumbs-down button, for that reason. I would rather Stumble-upon a few comics (or cars or bands or whatever) that I don’t like than have SU send me less comics (or cars or bands or…).
By the way, the reason that I think that SU interprets thumbs-downs in this way (see my previous response) is that if you hover your mouse over the thumbs-down button, it clearly says “No more like this”. This suggests that if give a site - for example a photography site - a thumbs down, SU will simply send you less photography sites. SU will definitely not realize that you gave it a thumbs-down because you found the images to be uninteresting.
So in other words, I think that when you use the thumbs-down feature, you’re screwing yourself… unless you actually want to see less of the topic you’re giving the thumbs-down to.
Except that if you do multiple tab stumbling “reporting last stumble” will probably make you report the wrong site. That is annoying, so I don’t report shit when it is so much easier to just hit that green and blue button again.
@Jean Car: I used to spend a lot more time on stumble than I do now, but I still come back to it and do a few hours a week… It really is a great resource.
@Tango: I think stumbleupon is a little bit more complex than that (although I think that has to do with half of it.) I think they also get the jist that you don’t like the site itself, so they don’t send you to it as often and, after a while don’t send you there at all.
@Korinthian: I know… I’ve always thought that was so annoying. Though, they also have on the stumble review of the page, a “Report This Site” option that sort of helps… I’ve thought of sending them a complaint about that, maybe make a reporter that would give you a list of recent stumbles (like say, 5?)
Don’t forget the best feature of all… the “search” feature. Type in any keyword or subject and SU wull stumble through it until you change it or run out of pages. Just selecting the predetermined subjects in the drop down is 5% of SU.
can’t seem to delete old favs whats up with this?
Is there a way to see who thumbed up the website you are currently vieiwng?
@ppeter: I don’t know. You’ll have to take it up with stumbleupon support.
@Geoserv: They have a list of people who liked the page, but you can’t tell everyone who did. If you suspect a certain person has, you can go to their page and see if the website is listed there.
I rarely use the thumbs down icon unless I’ve stumbled thru a few sites within the category that I already thumbs up for the same reason Tango mentioned. I think it has to do with the alt tag of “No more like this” when you hover over the thumbs down icon. It sounds like I’m telling SU to stop showing me anything else remotely related to the current page.
Apart from stumbling thru a topic of interest(point 3), one of the neat features of channels that I really love is the ability to stumble thru wikis, images and video (point 4).
I am quite annoyed by the fact that I can only see the last 40 people who thumbs up a page though.
You can highlight text, then right click it and there will be an option to StumbleThru sites related to that text. Sometime I just type something I feel like stumbling through on a form and then use that text.