StumbleUpon Finally Moves into Search

August 28, 2011

We wondered why StumbleUpon was dragging its feet in search. We the erosion of Digg.com and the ups and downs of Reddit.com. Then the Yahoo Delicious.com event. StumbleUpon looked like the go to service for curated Web site recommendations.

For anyone with free time sitting in front of a computer, StumbleUpon is the site to go to. Imagine Pandora met Google and had a love child. Welcome to StumbleUpon. Upon registration users check off topics of interests, the brain behind the website cherry-picks websites it believes will be interesting, and then the user can thumb–up it or thumb-down it, improving future recommendations.

A new feature has been introduced to the ‘inquiring minds wish to know’ website: search. While it may look like a search engine, it truly is not. The article, StumbleUpon Starts Exploring, Looking More Like Search, on Search Engine Watch, explains how the new explorer bar is not a search engine, but a marketing genius.

Even the best computer brains aren’t psychic. They cannot know what an individual is interested in at the moment. By adding the explorer bar, StumbleUpon users can point the program in the right direction. Similar to traditional search engines, when one enters a word into the explorer box, suggestions appear. But unlike search engines, StumbleUpon is a Russian roulette of searches; the user gets no say in which website will pop up as a result of the search. What risk!

While cute, many only care about the bottom line. In this case, that bottom line has just added a few digits. As the article explains,

…StumbleUpon is making a move that looks beautiful for businesses. While 60,000 marketers have used the “paid discovery” program to date, the Explore Bar may be able to offer far more targeted advertising opportunities.

This great Web site just got better, in our opinion. We can’t wait to see what comes next and what other similar sites (and search engines) will take away from StumbleUpon’s exercise in usefulness. Now, Beyond Search wants more, more, more.

Catherine Lamsfuss, August 28, 2011

Comments

Comments are closed.

Search the site
Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive

Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.