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Sincere request: Can somebody explain the dynamics of how Stumbleupon is so popular? I don't know anybody who uses it. I am friends with alpha-geeks, teenagers,

Sincere request: Can somebody explain the dynamics of how Stumbleupon is so popular? I don't know anybody who uses it. I am friends with alpha-geeks, teenagers, senior citizens, native Spanish-speakers in Mexico, etc. Barely anybody I know uses it. I had a StumbleUpon account before Twitter, before StumbleUpon was a URL shortener, etc. I used it a little, but people didn't seem thaaaat into it. There must be some pocket of main use-case there. Is it mostly the URL shortener that even non-S.U. users bounce around in when directed to a su.pr URL? I'd love to understand this. (Also, as somebody else pointed out, S.U. traffic is pretty low-quality. Just peep your Google Analytics, and those sessions are quite short compared to Twitter/FB/Tumblr referrers. At least on my sites.)

icegreentea 15y ago
Among my friends (university students, canada), it's pretty much used for idling wasting time when we need to give reddit or youtube a break.
webwright 15y ago
I think it's less popular than these stats might indicate. 1 Facebook user might click on 1 or 2 links per day. 1 SU user "stumbles" dozens or hundreds of times in a session. A stumble nets a pageview, but obviously has considerably less value (no intent baked into the click).
- sudont 15y ago
  Quote from a friend who stumbles: "oh yeah. totally. i hit 100 pages and maybe read 5 of them" It's like a youtube party, but with a little fast-forward button: http://xkcd.com/920/ http://xkcd.com/920/
mithaler 15y ago
I used to use it heavily, but I stopped when I moved to Chrome, since at the time it didn't have Chrome support and even now it feels hacky. Worth noting that SU traffic may be unusually low-engagement, since I would think it's likely a user will just click Stumble again after the half a second or so you get to grab their attention. (That's an educated guess, mind you--I don't have any data to support this beyond how using SU felt to me.)
Hovertruck 15y ago
I was wondering the same thing. I've never had the inclination to even go to their website.

icegreentea 15y ago

Among my friends (university students, canada), it's pretty much used for idling wasting time when we need to give reddit or youtube a break.

webwright 15y ago

I think it's less popular than these stats might indicate. 1 Facebook user might click on 1 or 2 links per day. 1 SU user "stumbles" dozens or hundreds of times in a session. A stumble nets a pageview, but obviously has considerably less value (no intent baked into the click).

sudont 15y ago
Quote from a friend who stumbles: "oh yeah. totally. i hit 100 pages and maybe read 5 of them" It's like a youtube party, but with a little fast-forward button: http://xkcd.com/920/ http://xkcd.com/920/

mithaler 15y ago

I used to use it heavily, but I stopped when I moved to Chrome, since at the time it didn't have Chrome support and even now it feels hacky. Worth noting that SU traffic may be unusually low-engagement, since I would think it's likely a user will just click Stumble again after the half a second or so you get to grab their attention. (That's an educated guess, mind you--I don't have any data to support this beyond how using SU felt to me.)

Hovertruck 15y ago

I was wondering the same thing. I've never had the inclination to even go to their website.