Social Networking Buzz: StumbleUpon
Three students from Calgary, Canada created StumbleUpon in 2001. The hype of StumbleUpon was slow and steady. After receiving some funding from companies such Google and Mozilla, StumbleUpon was purchased by eBay for $75 million in 2007. The two original founders then bought back the network in April 2009, with the help of several investors of course. StumbleUpon now remains in its original state, independently operated and funded by investors and donations.
StumbleUpon is the newest edition to social networking, the network uses a process called “collaborative filtering”, for the non-nerdy people, it means it filters our sites that you don’t want to see and replacing them with a site that strikes you attention / interest. You can also follow friends who are using StumbleUpon and connect through their favored web pages. The whole method of collaborative filtering is the utilization of human opinions and of course “machine learning, once again if you are not a nerd, this means the network teaches your computer how to filter out sites you do not want to see, it’s known commonly as “machine learning”. In this case your computer learns what you like through systems of “likes” and “dislikes” – if a user click “like” on a web page, StumbleUpon will not display any web pages similar to one the user “disliked”, pretty cool huh!
So, is StumbleUpon different from any other social networking sites, such as Facebook or Twitter? In short, yes it is. StumbleUpon allows Internet users to interact with each other, but it completely alters the way in which they use / judge the Internet. There is no need for any user to have to use a conventional search engine or simple luck of the draw to find a web page that strikes their interest. StumbleUpon makes it so users don’t have to go on an adventure just to find a web page containing interesting subjects / visuals.
Although I say all this amazing, glorious stuff about this new social networking website, it still has it’s errors. There have been many occasions of repeated web pages, usually the error is within the machine learning system, these problems can be reported to StumbleUpon and be fixed through alterations in there database, although this sounds very simple and convenient, reporting repeated web pages does not always work.
It is obviousStumbleUpon has its errors, the method of social networking and delivering content is outstanding. I will not be surprised if after little tweaks here and there, that StumbleUpon becomes not only one of the top search engines, but one of the top sources of social networking as well. In other words, if you haven’t checked out StumbleUpon, DO IT!
*Photo's Courtosy of Google Images*
By: Ethan O'Reilly