StumbleUpon – How To Channel Surf The Web

StumbleUpon allows you to channel surf the web by “stumbling upon” web sites of any type as well as web sites that are of interest to you.

In there own words:

“StumbleUpon discovers web sites based on your interests.  Whether it’s a web page, photo or video, our personalized recommendation engine learns what you like, and bring you more.”

The StumbleUpon Toolbar

If you’re new to StumbleUpon go create an account and install their toolbar.

The StumbleUpon Toolbar

StumbleUpon offers a toolbar for Firefox and Internet Explorer.  By installing the toolbar you’ll be able to “channel surf” the web by simply clicking on a button that says, “Stumble!“.

Start Voting

Start clicking on the Stumble! button and you’ll be presented with web sites in random order.  As you stumble along you can train the system by clicking on the thumbs up “I like it!” button as well as the thumbs down button if you don’t like a web site StumbleUpon delivers to you.

I wouldn’t use the thumbs down too much in the beginning until you’ve used StumbleUpon for a while.  You don’t have to vote up or down for any web site.  You never know what you’ll end up liking or disliking later down the road.  However, using the thumbs up – I like it! will help train the StumbleUpon system to bring you more web sites that you might like.

I’ll point out a few more toolbar features but a more complete guide can be found at their site – StumbleUpon Guide.

Other Toolbar Features

From the toolbar you’ll also be able to email a web site you like to people you know.

Reviews – Another feature you might want to try is the review bubble.  When you land on a web site you like and you want to see what other people have said about it, click on the white bubble icon on the toolbar.  If you hover your mouse over the icons you’ll see a little pop-up window with text that describes what that button does.

Filters – Moving to the right still on the toolbar you’ll find the word “All”.  This tells the Stumble! button to select any web site out there to bring to you.  After you play with stumbling all the different web sites out there, you might want to filter sites that StumbleUpon brings you by clicking on the “All” button and select a more specific category of web sites you want SU to bring you.

Images and Videos – Other types of web sites you can stumble to our image only and video only websites.  There are icons on the toolbar just for those types of sites as well.

I think you get the picture now on how to use the toolbar.

StumbleUpon Friends

As you stumble upon various websites, SU will present on your home page, people who select sites that you’re interested in as well. This is part of the SU formula.

Tagging – There is a tagging feature as well that will give you the ability to tag web sites you stumble and like. The tag button is located on the toolbar so you can easily tag a web site. This will add to the tag cloud on the right sidebar of your SU home pages.

That’s just a quick introduction to StumbleUpon to get you going.

Here’s my profile – http://bills2000.stumbleupon.com/ – if you want to add me as a friend and I’ll add you. Feel free to leave your profile in the comments as well.