Getting Started on StumbleUpon

What is StumbleUpon?

StumbleUpon is a way to mindlessly surf the internet guided by your friends and the topics you are interested in. StumbleUpon is a great way to find new content and kill time when you’re bored.

How to get started on StumbleUpon

Head over to http://www.stumbleupon.com/ and create an account.
Once you’re logged in, start by telling StumbleUpon what topics you’re interested in.
Add some friends. You can find them by having StumbleUpon search your email address book or you can ask your friends what their usernames are or check their profiles on other sites for links to their StumbleUpon profiles. (You can find me here.)
If you’re using Firefox as your browser (which I highly recommend), download the StumbleUpon toolbar. (If you don’t like your toolbar area being too cluttered up, it’s easy to turn turn toolbars on and off as you want to use them by right clicking in the toolbar area.)
Start stumbling. Press the “Stumble” button at the left end of the toolbar to get to a new site. Use the thumbs up and thumbs down buttons to tell StumbleUpon whether you want to see more sites like that in the future or not.

How to get the most out of StumbleUpon

I do most of my stumbling via Channels. My favorite channels: People I’ve Subscribed To (icon has two people, one in an orange shirt and one in a yellow shirt) which gives you sites based on your interests that your friends have already thumbed up and Search (magnifying glass icon) which gives you sites that other StumbleUpon users like you have thumbed up and match a search term you’re interested in, if you want to see what people are saying about a certain topic I find this more useful than a Google search.
StumbleUpon learns what you like from what you thumb up. If a friend asks you to give a thumbs up to a site and you don’t want to see more pages like that, don’t give it a thumbs up.
The more you put into the system in terms of telling it what you like and adding new sites that you like, the more you will get out of the system. The recommendation engine gets smarter as you participate more. If you’re a website developer, it will do you no good to only submit your own sites because StumbleUpon won’t have any info on what other sites you like so it won’t be able to find other users like you who might also like your site.

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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Carrie Isaac December 4, 2009 at 7:18 pm

I *really* need to start Stumbling, for the good of my site and the good of others. Except that I am never bored enough to start.

2 Carrie December 4, 2009 at 7:41 pm: my strategy is that when i have an article of my own i want to submit, i set a timer for 20 minutes and i stumble other sites before i submit my article. i don’t submit all of my articles, as you use stumbleupon more and more you’ll get a feel for what will do best on it

3 Kim (Sophisticated Dorkiness) December 13, 2009 at 9:50 am

Thanks for linking to this post. I haven’t tried StumbleUpon yet, mostly because I didn’t know exactly what the point was. I suspect I would waste a ton of time on the site!

4 Shelly @ Coupon Teacher July 12, 2010 at 9:36 am