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StumbleUpon was one of the first web services I came across that actually provided a new and exciting way to traverse the internet. I'll never forget the sense

StumbleUpon was one of the first web services I came across that actually provided a new and exciting way to traverse the internet. I'll never forget the sense of discovery and wonder and amusement it provided, my only other sources for cool and interesting content were things my friends would share with me or sites I would find via an article/web page. StumbleUpon took me out of my "filter bubble" if you will and introduced me to corners of the web I would have possibly never discovered on my own. It will be missed.

marpstar 8y ago
Seconded. Many hours in college that I should've spent studying were spent "stumbling". Digg came along, and later Reddit and HN and I spent a lot less time using StumbleUpon, but it was AWESOME for its time.
- jclos 8y ago
  I was considering dropping Reddit and going back to StumbleUpon, because I realised that it is very hard to use reddit without making it another filter bubble, which defeats the purpose of information discovery. Plus, the fact that SU doesn't have a toxic comment section makes it better imho. I am sad that it is gone.
  - tacostakohashi 8y ago
    Urgh, Reddit is indeed an addictive, toxic timesink of a filter bubble. It reminds me of Slashdot, but on a much larger scale. I have been reflecting on ways to fix it lately. I was imagining something like reddit, but... 1) not completely anonymous / pseudonymous. Maybe a profile photo with you holding a sign with your username for verification (like certain subreddits do), first name, and SMS / phone number verification or something. That's all - not strong firstname / lastname identity like facebook, but also no throwaway accounts. 2) allow people to have a different alias for different subreddits, in a way that they stay separate and can't be easily linked. maybe that means one verification photo per subreddit, and all you really share across subreddits is your username / password. the thing of people looking through post history across different, unrelated subreddits and beating them up in response to their latest post is pretty toxic, and goes against real life where people tend to have a different persona in different contexts.
    - jclos 8y ago
      To me it's the random jumping from site to site via browser extension that really made SU worth it. I can discover stuff through reddit, but the presence of a comment section kind of ruins it since I am not disciplined enough to ignore it. As to fixing reddit, I agree with your changes, but you'd run into the same issue all candidates for remplacement ran into: reddit delivers value through the network effect. You need users to get value. You need value to get users. Basically unless you can kickstart the replacement with a shitton of existing data, or unless reddit fucks up as much as digg did before, it's hard to compete.
      - tacostakohashi 8y ago
        Oh, right, another radical thought of mine - something that users would pay for. Even if it were just $1/month, one account per credit card only, it would serve as another little barrier to all the right people, and prevent throwaways and constant account deletion. Obviously for a commercial, advertiser-funded operation, it is all about more and more users and traffic and the quality of the content isn't a priority, but this eventually destroys everything. I'm imagining something much smaller, but potentially higher quality and self-sustaining. I guess I'm pretty much describing The Well, but hopefully cheaper and with more users, but not free and as many users as possible.
        eli 8y ago
        That's half of what makes the Metafilter discussions so good (the other half is aggressive behind-the-scenes moderation)
        brownbat 8y ago
        There used to be a mashup of random YouTube comments on one side, and random metafilter comments on the other testing, really validating, this theory. The difference was pretty stark. I could only find breadcrumbs: https://metatalk.metafilter.com/16003/Metafilter-comments-vs-Youtube-comments https://metatalk.metafilter.com/16003/Metafilter-comments-vs... An example might be archived somewhere...
    - 8y ago
  - gitgud 8y ago
    But StumbleUpon did have a comments section right? Could have sworn there was some kind of voting system, which allowed reviews...
  - qop 8y ago
    What makes you want to avoid your filter bubble? Sorry, not trying to be funny here, I want to understand why there are some people who seem passionate about consuming their Internet methodically and sort of like egalitarian, and other people are just content to delve deeper into their own idiosyncratic impulses. I kind of think of like polarization in consumption habits as like recursion, almost. Ya know, because like it seems like people who make that connection that they like to consume content they already agree with and they can consume from some source to get that stimulus, that they end up recycling those behaviors into all the different media they consume until some point where they reach like an island in what content they engage with. Anyways, do you have any idea? I'm just curious
antisocial 8y ago
Yes, it was my first tool of discovery too..
mergejoin 8y ago
Agreed, it was a great service.
fuball63 8y ago
I will still sometimes use it to break out of the humdrum of reddit/twitter/facebook. The app had some UX issues, and some of the content could have used better curation, but overall I think the core idea is still relevant.
- kilroy123 8y ago
  Same here. I used it as recently as a month ago.
egfx 8y ago
Yep. Stumble Upon was great for that. Using it was like pressing buttons on a slot machine. I think Stumble Upon lost it's way soon after they dropped the Firefox toolbar in favor of the integrated iFrame. Only Yahoo! when it first came out, made me feel the way SU did.
- devnonymous 8y ago
  Yep, this ! I stopped using StumbleUpon right after they decided to ditch the toolbar. The whole use case for StumbleUpon was to not visit a specific site but rather discover new ones. I used to absolutely love reading comments about the suggested pages as much as I liked the suggestions themselves. I also liked the tagging and searching through tags ..it was a bookmarking, social, reviewing, recommendation toolbar ...and then they went ahead and killed it trying to replicate arsebook or whatever.
- philipkglass 8y ago
  StumbleUpon had a Firefox extension up until the last, but the original toolbar was a victim of Firefox's removal of XUL/XPCOM extensions in newer versions. Firefox has made a lot of improvements lately but I still miss the broader, more powerful variety of extensions that Firefox used to support.
dom96 8y ago
Same. It's a real shame they are shutting it down. To be fair, I haven't used it in a long time. I'm now wondering how do I rescue my data from StumbleUpon, I don't see any way to download it. I looked through the settings and my profile page. I even tried this new mix.com website and it didn't transfer any of my data from StumbleUpon. Anyone know whether I can export my data somehow?
- Jonhoo 8y ago
  I wrote a tool that lets you do it here: https://github.com/jonhoo/su-extract https://github.com/jonhoo/su-extract :)
- gusanmaz 8y ago
  You could also check a tool I wrote that extracts page likes data as JSON file on https://github.com/gusanmaz/StumbleUponRescuer https://github.com/gusanmaz/StumbleUponRescuer
danieljohnson 8y ago
Amen. You speak for me too.
aldoushuxley001 8y ago
You had the opportunity to say you "stumbled upon" StumbleUpon!
kregasaurusrex 8y ago
It was really great for finding new things, both in and outside your interests range! I'd tried it again once or twice in the past few years, and was annoyed at how often and how noticeable the 'sponsored stumbles' became. Felt more like watching a series of hyper-curated ads instead of a natural discovery engine.

marpstar 8y ago

Seconded. Many hours in college that I should've spent studying were spent "stumbling". Digg came along, and later Reddit and HN and I spent a lot less time using StumbleUpon, but it was AWESOME for its time.

jclos 8y ago
I was considering dropping Reddit and going back to StumbleUpon, because I realised that it is very hard to use reddit without making it another filter bubble, which defeats the purpose of information discovery. Plus, the fact that SU doesn't have a toxic comment section makes it better imho. I am sad that it is gone.
- tacostakohashi 8y ago
  Urgh, Reddit is indeed an addictive, toxic timesink of a filter bubble. It reminds me of Slashdot, but on a much larger scale. I have been reflecting on ways to fix it lately. I was imagining something like reddit, but... 1) not completely anonymous / pseudonymous. Maybe a profile photo with you holding a sign with your username for verification (like certain subreddits do), first name, and SMS / phone number verification or something. That's all - not strong firstname / lastname identity like facebook, but also no throwaway accounts. 2) allow people to have a different alias for different subreddits, in a way that they stay separate and can't be easily linked. maybe that means one verification photo per subreddit, and all you really share across subreddits is your username / password. the thing of people looking through post history across different, unrelated subreddits and beating them up in response to their latest post is pretty toxic, and goes against real life where people tend to have a different persona in different contexts.
  - jclos 8y ago
    To me it's the random jumping from site to site via browser extension that really made SU worth it. I can discover stuff through reddit, but the presence of a comment section kind of ruins it since I am not disciplined enough to ignore it. As to fixing reddit, I agree with your changes, but you'd run into the same issue all candidates for remplacement ran into: reddit delivers value through the network effect. You need users to get value. You need value to get users. Basically unless you can kickstart the replacement with a shitton of existing data, or unless reddit fucks up as much as digg did before, it's hard to compete.
    - tacostakohashi 8y ago
      Oh, right, another radical thought of mine - something that users would pay for. Even if it were just $1/month, one account per credit card only, it would serve as another little barrier to all the right people, and prevent throwaways and constant account deletion. Obviously for a commercial, advertiser-funded operation, it is all about more and more users and traffic and the quality of the content isn't a priority, but this eventually destroys everything. I'm imagining something much smaller, but potentially higher quality and self-sustaining. I guess I'm pretty much describing The Well, but hopefully cheaper and with more users, but not free and as many users as possible.
      - eli 8y ago
        That's half of what makes the Metafilter discussions so good (the other half is aggressive behind-the-scenes moderation)
      - brownbat 8y ago
        There used to be a mashup of random YouTube comments on one side, and random metafilter comments on the other testing, really validating, this theory. The difference was pretty stark. I could only find breadcrumbs: https://metatalk.metafilter.com/16003/Metafilter-comments-vs-Youtube-comments https://metatalk.metafilter.com/16003/Metafilter-comments-vs... An example might be archived somewhere...
  - 8y ago
- gitgud 8y ago
  But StumbleUpon did have a comments section right? Could have sworn there was some kind of voting system, which allowed reviews...
- qop 8y ago
  What makes you want to avoid your filter bubble? Sorry, not trying to be funny here, I want to understand why there are some people who seem passionate about consuming their Internet methodically and sort of like egalitarian, and other people are just content to delve deeper into their own idiosyncratic impulses. I kind of think of like polarization in consumption habits as like recursion, almost. Ya know, because like it seems like people who make that connection that they like to consume content they already agree with and they can consume from some source to get that stimulus, that they end up recycling those behaviors into all the different media they consume until some point where they reach like an island in what content they engage with. Anyways, do you have any idea? I'm just curious

antisocial 8y ago

Yes, it was my first tool of discovery too..

mergejoin 8y ago

Agreed, it was a great service.

fuball63 8y ago

I will still sometimes use it to break out of the humdrum of reddit/twitter/facebook. The app had some UX issues, and some of the content could have used better curation, but overall I think the core idea is still relevant.

kilroy123 8y ago
Same here. I used it as recently as a month ago.

egfx 8y ago

Yep. Stumble Upon was great for that. Using it was like pressing buttons on a slot machine. I think Stumble Upon lost it's way soon after they dropped the Firefox toolbar in favor of the integrated iFrame. Only Yahoo! when it first came out, made me feel the way SU did.

devnonymous 8y ago
Yep, this ! I stopped using StumbleUpon right after they decided to ditch the toolbar. The whole use case for StumbleUpon was to not visit a specific site but rather discover new ones. I used to absolutely love reading comments about the suggested pages as much as I liked the suggestions themselves. I also liked the tagging and searching through tags ..it was a bookmarking, social, reviewing, recommendation toolbar ...and then they went ahead and killed it trying to replicate arsebook or whatever.
philipkglass 8y ago
StumbleUpon had a Firefox extension up until the last, but the original toolbar was a victim of Firefox's removal of XUL/XPCOM extensions in newer versions. Firefox has made a lot of improvements lately but I still miss the broader, more powerful variety of extensions that Firefox used to support.

dom96 8y ago

Same. It's a real shame they are shutting it down. To be fair, I haven't used it in a long time. I'm now wondering how do I rescue my data from StumbleUpon, I don't see any way to download it. I looked through the settings and my profile page. I even tried this new mix.com website and it didn't transfer any of my data from StumbleUpon. Anyone know whether I can export my data somehow?

Jonhoo 8y ago
I wrote a tool that lets you do it here: https://github.com/jonhoo/su-extract https://github.com/jonhoo/su-extract :)
gusanmaz 8y ago
You could also check a tool I wrote that extracts page likes data as JSON file on https://github.com/gusanmaz/StumbleUponRescuer https://github.com/gusanmaz/StumbleUponRescuer

danieljohnson 8y ago

Amen. You speak for me too.

aldoushuxley001 8y ago

You had the opportunity to say you "stumbled upon" StumbleUpon!

kregasaurusrex 8y ago

It was really great for finding new things, both in and outside your interests range! I'd tried it again once or twice in the past few years, and was annoyed at how often and how noticeable the 'sponsored stumbles' became. Felt more like watching a series of hyper-curated ads instead of a natural discovery engine.