stumbleupon

StumbleUpon

Category: Browsing

StumbleUpon is a toolbar extension for your browser. Its primary button, labeled "Stumble!," takes you to a site in any of the categories you've told the service you're interested in but that you've probably not been to before. If you like the new site, you press a thumbs-up button. If you don't, thumbs-down. Every time you vote, the system recalibrates its site selections for you using social filtering; it attempts to find sites for you that it thinks you'll like because other users with similar preferences also like them.

The site … Read more

eBay confirms StumbleUpon acquisition

eBay released a statement on Wednesday afternoon confirming that, as speculated, it has acquired Web site discovery service StumbleUpon. The price, according to eBay, is approximately $75 million.

eBay's most famous acquisition is arguably Internet telephony service Skype, which it purchased in 2005.

"StumbleUpon is a great fit within our goal of pioneering new communities based on commerce and sustained by trust," eBay's senior director Michael Buhr said in a statement. "StumbleUpon's downloadable toolbar provides an engaging and unique experience to its users, but it is the similarities in our approaches to the concept … Read more

News roundup: StumbleUpon, Last.fm, Xbox 360 chat

StumbleUpon/eBay talks heat up. The Wall Street Journal is reporting (registration required) that a deal between eBay and StumbleUpon to acquire the social networking and content recommendation service is getting closer. No agreement has been made on price, but the rumored amount brings it somewhere near $75 million dollars. If acquired, StumbleUpon's content preference algorithms could be employed on eBay's auction listings to give eBay users a new way to get recommendations on things they might want to buy. ( CNET News.com Blog)

Last.fm launching video service. As reported by the Register in March, Last.fm … Read more

Idio: 'Rolling Stone' 2.0

Idio is an online music magazine that launched late last year. Idio looks and feels like a paper magazine, with turning pages and some pretty slick-looking layouts. What's neat is that Idio isn't just made up of text and photos, there are also music and video clips embedded right into the pages. Users get content fed to them by an algorithm that selects articles or clips (it thinks) you might be interested in based on your favorite bands. Content comes from all over, either from blogs or music news feeds.

To drill down into your musical tastes a … Read more

StumbleUpon launching site-specific Stumbling

This is weird. Last night it occurred to me that Webware should have a StumbleUpon-like feature: In other words, that there should be a button on the site that links to a random Webware review--because if you don't come to the site frequently, a write-up on a cool site we saw a month ago might be valuable to you, even if it isn't, strictly speaking, new. I also began to wonder if it wouldn't make sense for many other sites, especially blogs, to add a random-link feature to their front pages.

Then this morning I read (… Read more

2view: Flickr-style notes + StumbleUpon voting

2view is a neat little tool that lets you add Flickr-like notes to any photo online. If you're unfamiliar with Flickr's note system, a) you should read our Newbie's Guide, and b) you're really missing out on some fun to be had with photos that are shared online. Flickr's Notes feature lets users add their two cents to a picture, and mark certain things of interest with a very specifically placed caption. It's the Web equivalent of a sharpie marker, although a little less permanent.

To use 2view, just plug in any old … Read more

StumbleUpon revamps video offerings for Wii browsers

Web site discovery and recommendation site StumbleUpon, best known for its thumbs-up-or-down recommendation and discovery system for Web sites, has given its Stumble Video product a makeover that targets the coveted demographic of Wii addicts. The site now has an interface specifically designed for the Wii's Opera browser so that Wii owners can use their consoles to find cool new videos from YouTube and other sites, targeted specifically toward their prior StumbleUpon rating histories. It's a bit like Netflix's recommendation service.

StumbleUpon, which claims nearly 2 million registered users, has also released the 3.0 version of … Read more

StumbleUpon adds video to its repertoire with StumbleVideo

StumbleUpon has added a video tool StumbleVideo to its social bookmarking service. StumbleVideo pulls content from YouTube, Google Video, and MySpace. Unlike the original StumbleUpon, there's no toolbar to download, and no signup required to use it. Registration has its benefits though: After the tool has figured out your tastes, it will bring tailored content to suit you.

The interface is very slick. After about 10 seconds of not touching your mouse, most of the player's GUI fades, leaving just the video on the screen. When a video finishes, hitting the giant Stumble button brings up another. If … Read more