Social Network: How To Discover Relevant Content With Stumble Upon

Explaining what StumbleUpon is is not an easy thing. As for Digg, del.icio.us and other ordinary 2.0 web services, all definitions are countless for number and quality. But here I just want to share my opinion with you all.

Now, think about all sites you visited in the last 7 days: how many among these ones were really important and interesting? Certainly just few ones, either for the subjects and for their contents quality.

Now, close your eyes and imagine how many web sites had already been saved by other netsurfers like you, with the same interests you have. Imagine you can have a direct access: how many important and interesting information you can get, and how fast!

StambleUpon is thought for this: it allows you to have access at once to hundreds of thousands of relevant sites, already shown by other netsurfers.

How StumbleUpon works

After you have entered your subscription, you have to specify which are your interests (that’s important for all sites relevance you will be then submitted) and then you have to set a toolbar in the browser. The toolbar allows you, while surfing the net, to run many important operations, such as:

• Express with a click whether you like that site (I like it icon) or not (verso thumb)
• Review, after you approved/disapproved, your navigation sites (comic strip with arrow)
• Point out in real time the same web site to a friend of yours (send to)
• And, last but not least, visualizing all sites considered by the system to be relevant ones for our own researches (the first icon: Stumble!).

Sites relevance in StumbleUpon

In my personal opinion, we are midway between Social Network and Social Bookmarking. At the beginning SU proposes us those same sites of the categories we specified when we registered. As we can express our personal tastes, this system knows us better and better and can adapt the relevance system to our personal tastes and needs.

Using StumbleUpon constantly is the best way to have access to relevant contents I have ever met.

How to raise one’s own sites traffic/visits

I use LLOOGG to analyze my sites traffic in real time and I was quite puzzled when I realized how StumbleUpon works good as much as about contents diffusion. After an article review, I visualized logs in real time: unbelievable, in no more than 10 minutes I got from SU about 300 unici/unicals!

It works in this way:

1. The user reviews a new page
2. This page is immediately proposed as relevant content to other users having the same interests
   
3. As much these users like it, so much the same page is proposed to other users.

Pay attention, because this system doesn’t accept any excess: if you exaggerate with your pages reviews, SU will seem to accept your articles, but instead it will point out none (that’s simple and clever too!!). But if you decided to use SU like a Web Marketing tool, there is a more ethical and right system: let it be pointed out by your own visitors by its link, available in tools application.

How to use SU as your blog contents source

All your actions on SU are filed in RSS. In your user page you’ll find an RSS for:

• Your likes
• Your dislikes
• Your articles
• Etc

Instead of handwriting advices and micropost in your blog, it could be an excellent idea to include all publications feed so that you can update your site with relevant contents during ordinary surfing, and in real time. I suggest you to use the following tools:

1. StumbleUpon: it uses articles feed as a source;
2. MySyndicaat: it examines the feed with MySyndicaat that will build a feed historical files and it will allow you also further actions like changing or creating a digest;
3. use a RSS parser to include the feed created with MySyndicaat in your pages, or use your blog platform plug-in.

Of course all interesting functions of this social network have not finished, there are many others like: friends managing, profiles visits/ views, mails and discussion groups. Here you have an excellent 10 minutes video that shows us quite clearly how SU works. Enjoy the show!