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Posted By:
dannysullivan
221 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchengineland.com)
Category: Bookmarking
15 Comments
Posted By:
dannysullivan
221 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchengineland.com)
Category: Bookmarking
15 Comments
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Comments
Given the nature of these two sites I'd love to know whether either one was founded with the intention of making money, when monetization became an issue and what the initial plans were.
Cwor, I'm all corporate minded these days!
Why are there features on Stumbleupon that do not have official explanation? A lot of people I talk to have no idea about some of the great features.
Personally I think Stumbleupon is the best social bookmarking sites out there, and is a great way to find new information within a topic. However it is rubbish for finding historical information.
How has the purchase by Ebay restricted the founders vision?
re:delicious
how come some bookmarks "count" and others don't. I've seen plenty of instances where some users are counted in the "bookmarked by 10 other people" and others weren't
How much impact (if any) is del.icio.us having on Yahoo's search algo/SERPs? (not just personalization, Danny, but general impact of being/having a popular bookmark)
What data is eBay mining from SU now?
I'm interested in whether Stumbleupon and delicious have any plans to create social bookmarking "vertical" sites (someone should come up with a term for that) specifically focused and built for certain areas of interest (i.e. small business).
(searchkari, to attempt to predict the answer, I'd say that both of them have ways of making content on various topics popular, because people are not restricted by their landing pages. SU has groups, btw.)
About SU: Do you plan to study, research and document the patterns people follow, when stumbling/thumbing/sending stuff?
Are you going to release an Opera toolbar, if not with all the necessary features? Maybe official working plugins (Javascript snippets) to insert into the personal bar in Opera, at least?
Thank you for asking us, Danny.
When is StumbleUpon going to build a good search feature and/or an API? ;)
And here's a question for both of them:
I'm thinking of a feature request that will enable us to favorite some sites more than others, kind of like "starring" messages in Gmail - still saved in our bookmarks, but one might be more frequently accessed than others.
The reason why I think this is a good idea is because there are some bookmarks that I refer to more often than others. If I StumbleUpon a news article that I like, for example, I'll give it a thumbs up (and a review), but I may not necessarily refer to it in the future as much as I'd refer to a very useful tool that I'd rather set aside in a "frequently used sites" bookmark. Therefore, it would be cool to "star" very specific bookmarks -- but in these instances, it would be more for personal use than for social discovery (and the algorithms should not weigh on this).
That way, you're discovering new sites your peers recommend but you're also using it to your benefit for later reference.
YES. Tamar, I agree with this wholeheartedly. This has always irked me about SU. I stumble cool sites and then get mad when I forget where they were.
Tamar's post right above this one was good. What's funny is that Digg has the ability to stick up to 3 favorites at the top - too bad it isn't social bookmarking :)
SU:
1 - what are your plans, if any, for real-time communication? Might give you more traction, like you need any.
2 - the "Recently popular websites with StumbleUpon users" spot on the homepage seems to be very slow on updating. Same with recent stumblers. Any plans on making these updates faster?
3 - small thing, but indenting message threads would make life easier.
4 - any plans to combine loginids with ebay? Maybe an openid catchall?
I don't think the Digg favorites is really what I'm aiming for here -- I favorite sites that I'd rather other people pay attention to (my own submissions - I'm a bit biased - or when I want to give another story more exposure). I'm looking more of the ability for these sites to use tools for personal bookmarking within the social bookmarking sites themselves.
Garrett: When we'll be able to have more than 200 friends? Why restrict it, if it helps make targetting more precise and adds more fun to the community?
StumbleUpon is not making the most effective use of the quality content provided to them for free by conscientious bloggers using SU. They could grow exponentially and be a far greater resouce by providing obvious permalinks to be used to send SU users and potential new users directly to either a specific entry in a Stumbler's blog or to all of the entries they have tagged for that subject.
Having permalinks would allow someone to share resources at SU with their friends via email, on their own sites and quickly in any blog post thereby sending massive amounts of traffic TO StumbleUpon. We need links like those that go directly to categories such as
http://www.stumbleupon.com/tag/e-commerce/ to easily target specific subjects.
While having content on Stumbler's blogs in Tag Cloud order works well for those who have limited interests, it makes it nearly impossible to easily find the awesome information linked in by prolific stumblers. Look at my own account there at http://flyingrose.stumbleupon.com and look at the tags and you'll quickly see how difficult it is to locate the tag for a particular topic.
Tags should either be in alphabetical order or there should be an OBVIOUS way to sort them alphabetically. The tag cloud is very useful and as a sponsor I do use it regularly; however, having all tags in that order only makes them far less likely to be used.
I agree with the others that many of the best features of StumbleUpon are practically a secret. That is why I teach how to do things at SU both there and in my own blog. SU should provide a prominent link via persistent navigation to clearer information on how to use it. A "tip of the day" could be tested and as long as it could easily be subscribed to and opted out of that might work well.
I suspect the 200 friend limit is intended to prevent the use of SU for network marketing. I hit that limit long ago and must regularly "unfriend" stumblers to make room for others. Like Tamar, I would love to be able to mark certain stumblers I contact more regularly. (If that is not provided users WILL find a way - elsewhere.)
Although finding and "meeting" others of like mind at SU is unparalleled and the reason for their huge popularity, it is StumbleUpon's ability to drive massive amounts of traffic that will keep people like me active there in the long run. Any actions taken to eliminate that ability will be seriously detrimental to the future of StumbleUpon. I hope we can all get over this idea that driving traffic or wanting to help people find specific sites, products or services is bad. Although it CAN be abused, it is a far greater benefit to many.
Just as they drive much traffic, much of their growth comes from people interested in making money online - whether they be entrepreneurs who have or wish to start a business or individuals who want to make a little extra money. As long as SU can be used to bring exposure to them, they will gladly keep using and recommending - HEAVILY recommending - StumbleUpon.
Few recognize today the power bloggers will be yielding. A regular blog or Web site is like having a column in your local paper where readership depends on current circulation. Interconnected blogs will be like syndicating that column: think the reach of Ann Landers with the added benefit of interactivity. A network of bloggers can eventually be as powerful as a recommendation from Oprah.
StumbleUpon could provide (or encourage open source development of) a lot of enhanced features that will make individual blogs there stickier and more effective. This is an advanced wish list and not anything that is likely to be available soon. Here are some examples of features we could use fast, easy ways to accomplish:
- Create buttons for fast, easy access to their most important categories.
- The ability to rearrange the order posts appear to improve usefulness and flow.
- Making individual blogs searchable by keyword.
- The ability to subscribe to content for a specific tag in a specific stumbler's blog.
- Table of Contents and indexes for specific Stumblers.
- A way to provide specific content or link to particular posts from pages a Stumbler could create in order to feature their best content for that subject.
Note that many of these would only be useful or necessary for those stumblers who make comments and provide prolific information. Those who only thumbs-up sites and do not review or provide additional information about them would not need these functions so they could be part of a separate sponsored type membership or made available on request or through recognition of a particular Stumbler's contributions there.