The UnSub

While we all appreciate Google’s enabling us to find an article on organic soy-free bird feed, there are times that we just want to peruse a more general topic, like “Self-improvement”. With over 2.5 million results and mostly businesses on the top results, how can we “discover” some quality information?

Well, you StumbleUpon it of course!

StumbleUpon is a service that lets you, in their own words, “Channel surf the internet with the StumbleUpon toolbar to find great websites, videos, photos and more based on your interests. StumbleUpon learns what you like and makes better recommendations.”

It is also community-driven and has over 2.5 million members! Well what do you know!? 2.5 million pages, 2.5 million members. Maybe we can figure this Internet-thing out!

There are 2 major benefits to using StumbleUpon:

1. Previewed Sites: StumbleUpon takes what it knows about you (you tell it what you’re interested in) and what other users liked gave a “thumbs up” to and delivers sites it thinks you will like. When you start rating sites yourself (thumbs up or down), Stumble takes notice and “learns” what kind of sites to serve you. Oh… and it works pretty good!

2. 5-star Results: Another cool feature is that, if you want it to, StumbleUpon inserts a 5-star rating system into your search engine results! So when your sifting through Google results, you can see which sites users liked.

Stumbleupon is perhaps not strictly a useful search extension, but it is a lot of fun. Stumbleupon a collaborative tool for browsing, reviewing and sharing great sites with like-minded people. It is a way to find interesting web pages you wouldn’t think to search for.

After installing the extension, you need to sign up. When you are all set, you click the Stumble button and StumbleUpon shows you pages matched to your personal preferences. These pages have been explicitly recommended by your friends or one of all the other Stumbleupon users with similar interests. With some 1 300 000 downloads, the Stumbleupon community has an impressive collective experience.

Another part of the Stumbleupon experience is rating sites you like to share them with like-minded people. Because of this rating system, Stumbleupon helps you discover great content you probably wouldn’t find using a search engine.