The Social Media Marketing Book

StumbleUpon

Perhaps the most mainstream social bookmarking site, StumbleUpon also differs from the standard voting site interface. Rather than a front page with a list of popular links, StumbleUpon lets users interact with it through a browser plug-in that allows them to "stumble" from page to page across the Web with the click of a button. When you see a page you like anywhere on the Internet, you click on a thumbs-up icon—as opposed to the thumbs-down icon for bad content. The system learns what kinds of content you like from these votes and starts to show you targeted pages as you stumble.

Most social news sites send a huge spike of traffic in the hours after a story goes popular, that tapers off quickly. StumbleUpon, however, has been known to send wave after wave of traffic to pages that were first discovered (submitted in StumbleUpon lingo) months ago. It also exhibits less all-or-nothing behavior, as a few votes can result in a couple of thousand hits.

Because of its older, less technical audience, StumbleUpon favors less geeky content, impressive photographs, short videos, and games (see Figure 6-11). The personalization system also allows a wider range of topics to be delivered to interested audiences. If you're having trouble giving your story a nerdy enough angle to do well on Digg, StumbleUpon might be the right place for you.

Figure 6-12. Delicious is a pure bookmarking ...