In our
recent Social
Bookmarking Faceoff, we discovered that social bookmarking site StumbleUpon actually has more
users than the more hyped del.icio.us. Currently
StumbleUpon has 1,375,696 users, according to its About page. Recently del.icio.us announced it had reached 1
million users. I grew even more curious about StumbleUpon's success after reading the
comments on a
recent post of ours, where a few StumbleUpon users left almost mystical comments
about the product: "I became a Stumbler in order to learn more about the world [and] it
has been invaluable", noted
one commenter.
To
discover more about the mysterious StumbleUpon, I interviewed co-founder and Chief
Architect Garrett Camp. In this post, Garrett describes StumbleUpon as a "personalized
content discovery" service and outlines how it has grown to the million plus users it has
today. Interestingly, he says that nearly half their user base is outside the US and more
than a third are over the age of 35!
In other highlights, Garrett muses on the serendipity of SU and the "social interaction that emerges from using StumbleUpon". We also hear about StumbleUpon's future plan to become "your guide to the web, a community-based discovery tool". Finally Garrett notes a new feature called "Stumble it!" - which lets people submit and review sites without installing the SU toolbar.
Here is the full interview...
R/WW: You started out in late 2001, yet it seems like only this year that StumbleUpon has really burst onto the scene. In May this year you 'launched' after some VC money and the company also moved from Canada to Silicon Valley. What do you think was the triggering point for the success you now have - was it that launch in May, or new features on the site, or something else?
GMC: The May launch helped, but every community reaches an inflection point where it becomes bigger and more successful than initially imagined. We think that StumbleUpon reached its inflection point earlier this year.
We registered StumbleUpon.com on Nov 5th, 2001 - and for the first 4 years grew slowly but steadily as we developed the toolbar and the recommendation engine. We had less than 10,000 users for our first year, but those members were very active and contributed a lot via suggestions and feedback. This was great because we were self-funded and working out of our bedrooms in Canada.
By the time we moved to San Francisco in Jan 2006, we had crossed 500,000 registered users - and shortly afterwards met our investors who very quickly saw the potential. Their investment allowed us to upgrade our infrastructure and hire a few more people (in an actual office!) and since then we've nearly tripled again. So there hasn't been any one event that triggered SU's success, its really been a persistant and incremental refinement of a system which we've used ourselves everyday.
R/WW: You're now bigger than del.icio.us, with 1.3 M users to del.icio.us' 1 M. I have to admit that surprised me when I found out, as I'd always assumed delicious was the biggest bookmarking site around. What type of users do you think StumbleUpon attracts? it seems like it's more 'mainstream' than delicious (which all the web 2.0 geeks love)...
GMC: de.licio.us is focused on organizing information, whereas our focus is personalized content discovery. We help people find something of interest or make a connection with someone with similar tastes.
With respect to our demographics, nearly half our user base is outside the US, more than a third over the age of 35, and they are viewing sites in every conceivable genre - from Economics to Humor, Gardening to Photography. So essentially StumbleUpon appeals to anyone who is looking to discover great new content and who wants a personalized tool that is easy to use.
People Stumbling Right Now
R/WW: StumbleUpon is a deceptively simple concept, yet it seems to have an almost philosphical meaning to some of your users. e.g. a person named Timoteo left this comment on my blog:
"[...] I became a Stumbler in order to learn more about the world, it has been invaluable. I appreciate that your site has come to my attention because I have learned something new. I will share this site with my friends to encourage them to look."
Do you get this type of comment often and if so, does it surprise you that people are so passionate about SU?
GMC: We get comments like this all the time. It's great to hear from people who find value in the serendipity of SU. People also really like the social interaction that emerges from using StumbleUpon, since it feels much different than other online communities. The ratings and reviews connect people with similar interests in a gradual and casual way, and the social networking component improves the experience even if you aren't looking for friends... it simply helps you find great sites. So although social networking isn't the primary purpose of SU, it definitely helps create a compelling and meaningful experience.
R/WW: In a previous post, we asked Joshua Schachter from delicious what he thought the difference was between his site and SU. He said:
"Delicious is about extending memory and saving things for yourselves and others. Stumbleupon is much more about surfing, like TV, or maybe Tivo."
I would think you'd be pretty happy with a comparison to Tivo, but I wondered what you think is the main difference between the two services?
GMC: del.icio.us is primarily an organizational tool, one to store and access your bookmarks from anywhere. It's about enhancing memory and recall. StumbleUpon is more about personalized content discovery and assisting navigation. Surfing definitely describes the experience, but it's much more interactive than channel surfing on TV. Instead of passively browsing through just a few hundred channels, you are actively improving your experience as you stumble, rate and review great sites.
R/WW: Finally, what are your future plans for StumbleUpon?
GMC: On the product side of things, we are always looking to improve the experience and the technology behind SU. In a larger sense, we want to be your guide to the web, a community-based discovery tool.
To make it easier to submit content to SU, we've recently added a web-based interface which lets you submit pages using a similar process to digg or del.icio.us... were calling it "Stumble it!". This lets people submit and review sites without the toolbar installed, so it should increase the number and diversity of content contributors.
We also recently integrated our database of reviews on 7M websites with popular search engines, so you can see who likes the pages you've found through Google or Yahoo. This makes searching more social and meaningful, since you can now view opinions from the community during regular search activity. This is already available on Firefox, and we plan to release it to all Internet Explorer users soon :)
Site Reviews
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: The Serendipity Of StumbleUpon - an interview with Garrett Camp, Chief Architect.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2825
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Comments
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Hi,
I am using StumbleUpon and Delicious for quite some time.
The difference I find is:
When ever I am bored I just Stumble to refresh myself - some times I GET really good info which is Delicious and its quite hard for me to stop stumbling ;-)
If I need quality/techie info, I stumble on Delicious. In some cases Delicious solved my problems with in few minutes :-) eg: Javascripts, Word pad themes, Plugins, Opensource s/w etccc....
I think the position of the Delicious tab in the broswer gives it an added advantage than Stumble tab which is some what cornered in the browser.
In the end Kudos to both....
Posted by: Sreen | October 17, 2006 5:50 AMI've just started using Stumbleupon and find that it mostly gives me flash based games and the odd quick page. Interesting for a bit but ultimately unfufilling
Posted by: Philip Wilkinson | October 17, 2006 6:58 AM@ #2
Start rating the sites you Stumble onto. The content delivered to you will become much more satisfying. If you like news, you get more news, if you like games, you get more games. Whatever it is that "fulfills" you when browsing, that's what you'll get.
Posted by: Jerm | October 17, 2006 9:04 AMi use su and delicious. for me, su is great for discovering web sites in a more social fashion. i have built some great friendships on su based in shared interests. delicious is great for remembering sites and placing tags on them.
i tend to use delicious more for sites around a very narrow topic (e.g., best practices for seo) and tend to place a lot of tags that are easily recognized by me.
when i use su, i tend to want to share reviews that other users might find interesting. i gear my activity on su as more social - i want to share something that i think others will find interesting.
one nice feature about su is that you can import your delicious bookmarks into your su account. all you need to do is go to delicious and export your bookmarks into xml and then import them into su where they appear as "thumbs up" sites.
Posted by: Laurence Toney | October 17, 2006 9:46 AMThe twains don't cross in my world. Stumbleupon is social from its roots. Del.icio.us is a container system that allows for flows to come in and out. They are like apples and oranges.
I use SU to dig around and just explore. Del though offers me my giant bookmark container and a very easy way of corrolating that data through others data. At this time I wouldn't use Del for SU stuff and I wouldnt use SU for the way Del works. This can always change with a revisioning or reenginering of the UI's.. or maybe it's a bit more deep and fundamental.
-a
Posted by: Andy C | October 17, 2006 11:10 AMSU is great, I joined 'Joined Jul 12/04' initially I just used the 'su' button to - during moments of bordedom - to randomnly generate web pages, rating as I went along improved the experience, finally I got around to uploading a picture and started posting reviews and comments - finding the community experience to be rewarding, I've met a people from all over the world, and I can testify to the international and cosomopolitan demographic - in short SU has introduced me to great sites and interesting people, I wholeheartedly recommend it.
Posted by: CharlesHB | October 17, 2006 11:15 AMSU is the greatest thing on internet.
Posted by: mirror | October 17, 2006 11:32 AMBecause, it gives you instant access to the best things of your choice.
Hey there,
I'm a Stumble Upon user, have been for almost a year now. I'm one of the stumblers who enjoy readwriteweb.com, slcbrus (http://slcbrus.stumbleupon.com/) is my nickname on Stumble, you have my photo on your screenshot here :-)
What I really like about Stumble Upon is the social aspect of it more than it's bookmarking features. I don't use this service for actual research, if I need to find websites on specific topics I usually go to delicious or magnolia... or Google.
I use Stumble Upon mostly because I love it's contacts features. It's messaging service is great, super easy to use. I mostly spend my time there browsing user profiles and that's how I find out about interesting or fun websites.
I'd say it's a great social network, it's very friendly and easy to grasp for anyone new to social bookmarking. Delicious for instance is a bit more nerdy, more difficult to get around.
Stumble Upon is a great way to meet all kinds of people and discover new interests. The trick is to put some work into it. If you start posting reviews and new links, people will react to that and there lies all the fun.
Basically, Stumble Upon is a lot more about stumbling upon people than stumbling upon websites, as far as I am concerned.
Posted by: Stéphanie | October 17, 2006 5:24 PMShish Kebab, Tiropita.. Mmm delicious... I miss home..
Posted by: Emre Sokullu | October 17, 2006 9:52 PMWith regard to Mr Wilkinson in #2 above: I am sad to hear of his unfulfilled experience. It is rightly stated elsewhere here that by being interactive (Using your Thumb's keys) you improve your quality of stumbles. More than that, I have learned that Our associations here (friends) greatly effect the quality and quantity of your results. I too have made many friendships here and through SU have discovered ways to communicate pretty effectively with new friends in other places with different languages. While we all have the same feelings and thoughts, generally speaking, its our experiences that colour those thoughts. The more colours that you have an you pallet the more complete and wonderful the result. I would welcome Mr. Wilkinson or anyone else to visit with me and I will be most happy to share my experiences about StumbleUpon further. http://timoteo3858.stumbleupon.com/
Respectfully,
Posted by: Timoteo Campos | October 18, 2006 4:58 AMTimoteo Campos Timoteo3858
With regard to Mr Wilkinson in #2 above: I am sad to hear of his unfulfilled experience. It is rightly stated elsewhere here that by being interactive (Using your Thumb's keys) you improve your quality of stumbles. More than that, I have learned that Our associations here (friends) greatly effect the quality and quantity of your results. I too have made many friendships here and through SU have discovered ways to communicate pretty effectively with new friends in other places with different languages. While we all have the same feelings and thoughts, generally speaking, its our experiences that colour those thoughts. The more colours that you have an you pallet the more complete and wonderful the result. I would welcome Mr. Wilkinson or anyone else to visit with me and I will be most happy to share my experiences about StumbleUpon further. http://timoteo3858.stumbleupon.com/
Respectfully,
Posted by: Timoteo Campos | October 18, 2006 5:01 AMTimoteo Campos Timoteo3858
"The twains don't cross in my world. Stumbleupon is social from its roots. Del.icio.us is a container system that allows for flows to come in and out. They are like apples and oranges."
I agree. When comparing the two, StumbleUpon is purely the social application. I've always used del.icio.us to have a roaming bookmark site that is accessible from anywhere, but I do not rely on it at all for the social network. (It is interesting to note how many people have saved the same URL, though.)
Posted by: Tamar Weinberg | October 18, 2006 7:19 AMI am addicted to Stumble! I especially like stumbling through very general tags like GADGETS or SUNRISES, where Google is basically useless. I find things I never could with a search engine, and there are always random cool surprises. I'll still use Google when I know very specifically what I am looking for, but when I just want to explore, be entertained, or learn something new, I think Stumble is a much better choice.
Posted by: Steve Russell | October 19, 2006 12:00 AMPersonally I find Stumble to be the best thing to happen to the Internet since web pages! Del is really just Favorites sharing. You can say Stumble does the same thing but it just feel so much more in-depth and "active" than Del does. Plus there is much more the "community" feel to it.
And I totally understand the people who say it didnt really do anything for them..."brings me just just a few different types of pages and thats all.", but the thing with Stumble is that you need to go through all the catagory choices to get a wide range of ideas for web sites. The more you use it, the more you get out of it.
Posted by: GiuseppeFargo | October 19, 2006 9:27 PMStumbleUpon was great until it tried to become another Myspace. There's really no point to the whole 'social' aspect - I'm just there to browse websites.
Posted by: Dustin | November 2, 2006 7:31 PM