« Perfectionism: the most prolific form of procrastination | Main | All I Needed to Know About Social Media I Learned In Kindergarten »
Funny thing happened on the way to 3,000 Stumbles
By dana | September 25, 2007
My obsession with StumbleUpon is no big secret! But in the last few days, I’ve been even more impressed with the great SU. Here’s the shocker, my newfound respect has absolutely nothing to do with traffic to this blog or any of my others…while that’s nice too.
What I’ve found out firsthand is that StumbleUpon’s algorithm really does work. I’m no algorithm expert (see Tim Nash). I trudged along in high school to make it through AP Calculus and Physics classes specifically to avoid spending time on them in college 
Nope, my hypothesis that it works is backed up by much less scientific factors. What is the basis for my assertion? After more than 2,500 thumbs, I am getting great stumbles! Without any specific research, I would estimate that at least 75% of the time when I hit that Stumble! button, I’m actually somewhat interested in what pops up next.
For a while there, I had gotten really frustrated with the basic Stumble! for complete lack of interest in the sites it was showing me. I had gotten in the habit of either stumbling specific keywords or choosing to stumble my friends’ stumbles (or sometimes my idols stumbles) instead of leaving it up to chance in an effort to make my countless hours of wandering more efficient.
Then, a few times about a week ago, I must closed out Firefox and without realizing it started back into stumbling without designating what I wanted to Stumble. And to my amazement, it was a couple hours before I realized it…I’m not always the most observant person
Again, I have no numbers on this, but I would estimate that in the past week, I have ended up commenting on and/or subscribing to at least 40 or 50 new blogs that I found from my new favorite “All” selection. And even better, I have come across very few random “please stumble this page so we can make a record” pages, websites dedicated to hunting mishaps (for some reason I used to land on those quite often) and pages dedicated to the exact same things found and trashed daily in my Junk e-mail folder.
So in closing, thank you StumbleUpon! Thank you for knowing what I want before I do, and more importantly thank you for learning what I really don’t want! You’ve made me care less about how to fool you into sending me more traffic and more about helping you help me find great stuff!
If you are a more algorithmically inclined stumbler and you’ve somehow missed Tim’s analysis, seriously check it out…he put a huge amount of time and thought into it and it’s definitely worth a 10 minutes of your time!
Other Stuff You Might Like:
September 25th, 2007 at 10:33 am
Thanks for including links to my work
and the kind words I hope it wasn’t to scary I know for a lot of people just the word maths makes them scream to the hills, you should have seen the original post.
September 25th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
Stumbleupon is a truly amazing experience, is it not? I am enjoying all sides of it. I’m glad to see that you are doing well, Dana.
Michael
September 25th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
I’m finding the same thing. I’ve only recently being using SU properly and I’m still fumbling a little - I keep having to modify my interests as they aren’t quite what I think they are but now I’m getting more and more good stuff. It’s a really nice way to chill out at the end of an evening.
September 25th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
Well, I guess I have to stumble more first and give the algo some time to figure out what I like. The problem I might have is that I really like a lot of things, except flash games.
Great post - and thanks for getting me to read a ‘math post’ at 4am in the morning
September 25th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
I just noticed that I can highlight any word or phrase on a page, then right-click and choose stumble with’(whatever words I highlighted)’ and off I go.
September 25th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
@ Tim You described it really well and laid out some great ideas. I just wouldn’t have any idea where to begin in breaking something apart that way…maybe cause I’d rather do just about anything else
Thanks for doing the work for the rest of us 
@ Michael It is a phenomenal place! Hope things are going well for you over at the Curmudgeon…I’ve been crazed and haven’t kept up with my feeds as much as I’d like…but there is a feed so that’s the good news
@Caroline I was the same way. I’ve been signed up over there since last November. But I never took the time to really delve into it and understand its value until recently.
@YC Death to flash games…just kidding game lovers! I did go into the profile options to turn off Flash. I only changed that setting in the last day or so, so I can’t really say it works or it doesn’t yet. As for reading math at 4AM, it probably builds character…so it’s good for you
@Joe I know, it took me awhile to get that too…I’m pretty terrible at reading directions and FAQs unless I absolutely have to…
September 25th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
Dana, you are now offically hooked to SU. Wow, 2500 stumbles already? I imagine you’ll pass me before the year is out. That’s okay, I have some 1500 pages on my website begging to be stumbled…
September 25th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Come on now Matt, no stumble begging
Although, I would have to say that there is definitely a stockpile of stumbleworthy content on your site 
And yes, I have a problem…it’s quickly passing hooked and moving towards some form of disorder!
September 25th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
This is a pretty interesting take on this, I personally didn’t notice anything like this mostly because I use stumble to find random or obscure sites on the internet. In truth stumble started working the way I wanted it to right off the bat.
Although, from time to time I set stumble to web design only and I find it sends me better results than it used to.
September 26th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
I wasn’t the biggest fan of SU but after using it for a week, I am really appreciating it more. The more I SU things I like the more it seems to be more intuitive. Great post! I will stumble this.
September 27th, 2007 at 4:04 am
[…] Funny thing happened on the way to 3,000 Stumbles […]
September 27th, 2007 at 7:30 am
And dont’t forget, the SU community is filled with so many nice people. Yeah, you run into a strange person once and a while but, in general, Stumblers are there to find what they want to find OR to see new and interesting sites. I keep coming back ‘cuz the Stumblers are nice and helpful.
September 28th, 2007 at 5:53 am
I just cant seem to organically achieve a respectable friends list - I am gonna keep trying though!
September 28th, 2007 at 10:15 am
@Chris It is great out of the box for finding the most random sites
@Chessnoid I think it takes time to really see the benefits of SU!
@Barbara You’re so right. The community there really is great. I’m usually not so comfortable with networking, but stumblers make it very easy and fun!
@Nizzo Keep at it Nizzo. It helps to keep searching for stumblers that are interested in the same things and reviewing their blogs…check out my Quick Tip for A Stumbletastic Fanbase post
September 28th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
I agree Dana. Everyday I use it seems to get better results. Cheers!
October 3rd, 2007 at 6:53 pm
Thanks for this Dana - you have increased my motivation to use Stumbleupon - you are one of many people to have recommended this site but one of the few to spell out the reasons so clearly.
October 14th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
Cool, I love stumble upon, and use it all the time. I always get interesting stuff!
October 19th, 2007 at 2:18 am
Hey Dana,
SU does learn from your habits, so the more you do it naturally, the better it learns and serves.
Cheers
James
October 22nd, 2007 at 12:07 pm
Dana, I was just Stumbling and was brought to You! I really enjoy stumbling and I have also found that the more I stumble, the better the sites/blogs I’m brought to. I’m pretty impressed with it so far.
December 9th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
Newbies…
enjoy it while you can.
January 16th, 2008 at 4:14 am
I thought stumbleupon was quite good at assessing what I want… until I stumbled upon this article
Keep Stumbling!
January 27th, 2008 at 2:50 am
Well, ill start using the thumbs up thing, see how that works…. considering this is my 41,372 stumble (dead serious, I copied and pasted that), I would say I spend a lot of time skipping useless stuff.
March 17th, 2008 at 2:22 am
[…] Funny thing happened on way to 3,000 stumbles - shows how Stumbleupon can send very good traffic. Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]