StumbleUpon Launches Su.pr URL Shortener, But Is It Good for the Magic?
Social serendipity service StumbleUpon began opening up its new URL shortening service this morning and we have 250 invites included below. StumbleUpon is great for two things: discovering fabulous new websites and getting waves of traffic sent to sites you publish. The new URL service is indeed quite Su.pr (that's its name) but we wonder if it will lead to such an influx of publisher-submitted content that content submitted by users because it's cool will have more noise to compete with.
For publishers the service looks very cool, it includes features we haven't seen anywhere else and offers access to the huge Stumble audience.
The Su.pr link shortening service offers the following:
- Real time analytics showing how many people click through your links, how many came via StumbleUpon in particular and who the most prolific "reTweeters" have been.
- Easy publishing to Twitter and Facebook, including the ability to schedule those links and messages to be pushed out at a particular time.
- "Suggested posting time" metrics, based on historical data concerning when people are most likely to click through your links.
- A handy bookmarklet that makes submission of links quick and easy.
It's interesting to note that Stumble's business model is based on publishers paying 5 cents per visitor to have pages inserted into relevant Stumble streams already. Now publishers are being encouraged not only to put their pages into Stumble for free, but are also aggressively prompted to write their own reviews of pages.
What's Not So Super
Other possible critiques of Su.pr include that the framed pages aren't pretty in mobile displays (the frame is clunky and the obscured destination URL is a bummer) and there hasn't been a Su.pr API announced, something that competitors like Bit.ly, Cli.gs and Tr.im all offer.
Stumble says they are using the right kind of redirect to keep search juice on the page that's being linked to, (Update: SearchEngineLand's Danny Sullivan says this is not true) but we're not sure what Su.pr will do to third party analytics services like Google's. We also question whether the "clicks" are really clicks on Su.pr; just like all URL shorteners have happen, Su.pr links are sometimes "opened" by browser extensions that peak at the full URL without readers actually clicking on them. For example, the service reported 5 clickthroughs on one of our links just 5 seconds after we sent it to Twitter. That's possible but doesn't seem terribly likely. It's a hard problem to solve and one that is much more important for publishers with tech-savvy browser extension using audiences than it is for the vast majority of the world. In tech publishing, it's not uncommon for other URL shortening services to report 1k clicks when internal analytics have only seen 700, for example.
Su.pr encourages publishers throughout its interface to promote their own content, a reality of the web publishing world that brings with it some ethical questions. The company has always flirted with these questions by serving up paid content pages inside Stumble streams without disclosing that they were paid for, something that few other widely-loved technology companies could get away with. Mega corp eBay can't be blamed for any of this as Stumble's founders recently bought the company back (which is awesome).
Perhaps the bulk of Stumble-submissions were already coming from publishers though, not from fairies touching web pages with dew-drop-dripping magic wands as we naively hoped.
We're sure Su.pr will be great for StumbleUpon and for publishers, but we'll have to see how good it is for users. Fortunately some self-correction is baked in to StumbleUpon, viewers simply vote down weak content and other people are thus likely to be served that content as they Stumble through the web. The efficacy of that self-correction may be mitigated by a substantial increase in noisy publisher content pushed into the system out of self-interest though. We'll see!
If you would like to try out Su.pr for yourself, you can use the invite code "suprrww."
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Please define the word "magic" in the context of this post.
I was sorely disappointed when framed sites started getting popular again a few months ago with the rise of owly, facebook's link shortener, and most notably the digg toolbar.
Not only does it have the potential to mess with analytics, indexing, and SEO like you have mentioned ago, but it also has the unfortunate effect of giving the end-user's browser history entries that are more confusing to navigate through. For example, using FireFox's 'awesome bar' to make your way back to a site in your history becomes more complex when the URL and the page title are obscured by the information from the site doing the framing (StumbleUpon in this case). Now, this may be challenging with the awesome bar, but it's downright difficult and annoying with, say, the Safari url bar.
Besides the framing, it could be a cool idea, but this alone will probably keep me from clicking on links.
Todd, I'm sorry if that was unclear. I mean social serendipity powered by fairies. If you've used Stumble much perhaps you know what I mean when I refer to that playful half-mystery of discovering "random" pages that are really algorithm, social graph and expressed interests all combined. It's a magical thing, StumbleUpon!
"...I mean social serendipity powered by fairies"
Thank you for the clarification.
"...that playful half-mystery of discovering random pages that are really algorithm, social graph and expressed interests."
Ah, what was recently killed off at Twitter known as @'s
How many URL shortening sites do we need? I prefer bit.ly.
@Andy: Why?
interesting, but still using my jetpack tr.im shortcut.
Stumbleupon has gotten progressively worse since becoming a yahoo property. By throttling back on the very people who most used and loved the old stumbleupon they have left stumbleland in ruins-- I doubt supr will be all that super...
I could not understand what it is amazing.?
Recycle, SU is not part of Yahoo but Ebay.
Thanks for the invite code, RWW!
I'm a bit.ly user as well. Although with occasional use of is.gd etc, bit.ly is great in having click-stats, including other users' conversion of the exact same URL. Also, it provides API which is a fantastic way to incorporate in my Twhirl for easy sharing & stats monitoring at the same time. (if interested: 6 URL Shorteners for stats tracking)
With the emerge of numerous url shorteners, the big gamer like StumbleUpon sure has captured our attentions. I'd love to see how the new service goes, but at the same time praying that it won't ruin the existing service which I'm fairly satisfied with SU.
@wchingya
Social media/blogging
I've tried bit.ly and su.pr and I prefer bit.ly.
I have checked and I believe our Stumble coverage is the only blog coverage that mentions fairies today http://bit.ly/nLhF4 [from http://twitter.com/marshallk/statuses/2092616754]
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
|
June 11, 2009 12:09 PM
Actually, when I click on a su.pr link on my BlackBerry Bold, it doesn't load in the su.pr frame, but goes right to the URL. Maybe they're doing some mobile detection that doesn't know about your particular mobile browser?
With the emerge of numerous url shorteners, the big gamer like StumbleUpon sure has captured our attentions. I'd love to see how the new service goes, but at the same time praying that it won't ruin the existing service which I'm fairly satisfied with SU
I click the su.pr links from Twitter, and all I get is the stumble upon toolbar and then I'm locked in an endless loop. I get no content. Any suggestions as to why or how to fix it?
1. Thou shalt not FRAME my URL.
2. Thou shalt not display any advertisements during the redirection of my URL.
3. Thou shalt not promote additional information during the redirection of my URL.
http://www.url360.me/commandments.html
I'd love to see how the new service goes, but at the same time praying that it won't ruin the existing service which I'm fairly satisfied
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Hi, please try this multiple URL shortener:
http://0xbb.us
It’ll shorten many links into one page, and provide visit count!
It will work perfectly when you want to share many links at once,
especially for contents like news, pictures….
I hope you find it useful! ^^
Hmm, another URL shortener. Maybe it is because none has become a real market giant.
Really, there is too many of these. One or two is good enough!