LostInTechnology

StumbleUpon Makes Serious Changes

Posted on 06. Oct, 2008 by Kyle Judkins in Internet Tools

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This is a guest post by Luis Sandoval.  Make sure to check out his blog, Daily Slackr, to get a dose of social grace for the media neophyte.

StumbleUpon recently announced that changes were coming to the ailing start-up that was acquired by Ebay just a few months ago, and is now on the market to be sold without a word as to why. Industry pundits are speculating on the reasons for the quick 18 month turnaround of StumbleUpon, but what is for sure is that StumbleUpon is due for some major changes, all of which took place recently.

The start-up has dropped the browser plug-in format which was a barrier to entry for new users not familiar with the site ranking and sharing program. The new StumbleUpon is a browser toolbar that sits nicely at the top of your browser window and offers the same functionality that the plug-in version offered, but with a much cleaner look.

Users are able to share their favorite sites with their friends in the network, and rank pages which helps in the overall search engine ranking for each individual page.StumbleUpon will also continue to recommend sites it thinks you might enjoy based on your preference selections, which drives you to new sites you may not have otherwise found.

StumbleUpon takes another stride in marketing itself by creating a partner program which allows partners to utilize the search toolbar within their own site to guide users to other related articles within the partner site. Two partners that have signed up to be a part of this groundbreaking service are The Huffington Post and HowStuffWorks, both of which are already highly trafficked sites.

The widget will sit on the main page and hopefully attract readers deeper into the site by directing them to related posts within the specific site, thus increasing readership and broadening its attraction to new users.

While I have no doubt it will be a success, I’m curious to see how many more sites choose to partner with StumbleUpon. One of the main obstacles is that the intent of the application is not immediately known to new users. The plug-in and the browser toolbar both suffer from not being immediately obvious in their use and may be ignored by the non-savvy web user. Still, without the plug-in issue and fears of malware being installed, usage should increase and given time should help the struggling start-up.

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Tags: changes, stumbleupon, updates