StumbleUpon is a social bookmarking site. That means it is a repository for bookmarks saved by members, who can browse what others are saving, rate what is saved and reshare it with their own friends. Once you are a member, StumbleUpon makes connections to new people based on what you are sharing and the areas you’ve identified as interests, such as “history,” “Led Zeppelin,” or “reading.” StumbleUpon badges are frequently displayed on articles at popular Web sites so that you can share them to your account automatically–the company has done a very good job of making its sharing service well known.

Shared links are organized by topic and the tags applied by members, which makes browsing for something of interest very simple. The site also lets you promote your site by placing StumbleUpon badges on your blog or social pages. Just pick the design you want at this Buttons & Tools page.

A toolbar (see below), which installs into Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers makes quick work of rating, sharing and categorizing links, as well as managing friend lists. The real trick of StumbleUpon or any of the other bookmarking sites is making use of them consistently. People who do attract large numbers of friends who depend on them to find interesting links.

The question I have after browsing the site for some time is, what percentage of members actually share bookmarks frequently? The same profiles show up in the 10 “Recent Stumblers” of the site’s home page quite frequently and, when exploring matching profiles, it is not uncommon to find people who have not posted in the last month or year, as well as quite a few profiles that seem to have posted only once or twice.

So, there is a significant opportunity for an active bookmarker to make a lot of connections and increase their influence at StumbleUpon. The widespread use of StumbleUpon badges on popular sites seems to drive a lot of new members who you might connect with.

Home Page: StumbleUpon.com
A social bookmarking service which is used on many popular sites.

Free. Members can become sponsors of StumbleUpon, which gives them additional exposure on the site, the ability to create new groups and to turn off sponsored postings for $20.00 a year.

Tags: blogging, bookmarking, news filter, news-sharing, ratings, tagging

This entry was posted on Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 11:57 am and is filed under Social Site Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.