How to StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon

An application for liking other sites. Once installed it was not readily obvious to me what I was to do with it. People in one forum would post their new posting and say stumble it.

I tried the stumble in the address bar and did not notice anything happen.

I tried the stumble on the Stumble toolbar and it just changed sites. If not open, With Firefox, View, Toolbars, StumbleUpon Toolbar

Finally I noticed in my WordPress website stats under Referrers was the SU icon. If I put my pointer over it, I could see which post was Stumbled.

I heard people say they had lost all their counts by changing domain names. I asked the Twitter StumbleUpon id how can you tell counts on your own posts. The person answering must have been new. No answer that explain how I could see counts on my own posts.

Then a twitter user said she had 10, 000 likes. I had a conversation with her to understand StumbleUpon and now I will enlighten you.

Discovered after my conversation. On her post, the second icon in is her StumbleUpon count – 10K Ahh so that is how you see your own counts.

To see your own, look at your social blookmarklets for a number. If no number. Then no Stumbles. Site Stats give you a clue at least that a post was stumbled.

If you want to know how many likes a site has gotten, like one, go to and click Favorites on the Stumble toolbar. This is a list of your favorites and the numbers are how many people have like it.

Liking the post is what gives it rank. Stumble on the Stumble Tool Bar gives you a new post to vote up or down or not at all. This new post is based on your last likes and everyone else’s. The likes on a post have the more targeted the post you are shown. This might be missing out on others but it might take you to places you had not planned on going.

StumbleUpon Introduces you to new things, ideas, photography, YouTube, slides, Flash presentation. Stumbling is just stumbling upon a new post based on past likes of yours and others. The likes affect the counts. The counts affect your viewing pleasure.

When you go to the StumbleUpon site and install the application, it asks about your interests. Not sure what that was going to get me. Junk mail like other sites. Now I realize they wanted to know what to serve you.

The big yellow button should have been a clue but wasn’t because when I clicked it – it rummaged around and eventually brought up a site. Something I wasn’t interested in. That was why I went away originally and thought … well … maybe another day.

Having fellow Forum members ask for Stumbles made me want to go figure it out. I was in pursuit of knowledge.

Now I have. You are the benefiting from of my cluelessness. Woot Woot!

Best way to learn sometimes is to fumble around or find someone willing to stick with you while answering the questions. One question after another, exposing my cluelessness, and their patience.

Enjoy Stumbling!

Resources

• http://twitter.com/StumbleUpon
• http://www.stumbleupon.com
• Another thoughts of ideas about StumbleUpon

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Eileen Lud­wig of Social Media School brings to the world decades of com­puter expe­ri­ence with a desire to learn and share cur­rent tech­nol­ogy mul­ti­me­dia tools for com­mu­ni­ca­tion. She is owner of four sites: Free­lance­Tourist , Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy, Web Design School, and Social Media School Each are in dif­fer­ent stages of devel­op­ment and evolution.

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