StumbleUpon's new link shortening site called Su.pr made its public (yet private) launch today. Similar to Bit.ly, it shortens URLs and lets users track where they end up, along with stats on who's clicked on them. It also brings along StumbleUpon's software-free toolbar which lets users hop to both recommended and random links.
However, the real appeal of Su.pr is that it gives each shortened URL the potential for greatness. URLs can be seeded not only to Twitter and Facebook, but also into StumbleUpon's content pool where they can be discovered and promoted by its users. Just like Digg's much loved and hated URL shortening service, this system brings the promise of a longtail from your link showing up as a related item. But in Su.pr's case, the goal isn't to get on the front page as much as it is to become a site that users are recommended to visit, or discover through organic ratings.
Su.pr lets you post links at a later date if you don't feel like shortening something right away. You can also track activity on links after you've shared them with the public.
(Credit: CNET)Compared to Bit.ly, Su.pr's stats tracking tools are a little more basic. It doesn't grab things like metadata from the URL's source site, or pick up all the places where the link has been re-posted. Although it shows you how many times your link has been re-tweeted on Twitter, and given a rated review on StumbleUpon. It also breaks down traffic sources into two sets of data. One is for the people who click on the link from outside of StumbleUpon. The other is for organic traffic from the site.
In my brief test of the service earlier today, all of my traffic came from outside sources. But if you're a heavy StumbleUpon user with lots of friends on the service, this can be a good way to figure out where those clicks are coming from.
Su.pr has also got some really smart tools for publishers. The first is a way to publish shortened URLs at a later date and time. So say I have a story that's going up in two hours. I can grab that URL before it's live, shorten it, and set it to post to Twitter, Facebook, and StumbleUpon the second it goes live.
Soon it will also let publishers use the shortening service while maintaining domain branding. So instead of using su.pr/XXX, I could set it up to use cnet.com/XXX. It will also be able to be inserted into your site's code, so that each URL you link to is automatically shortened. It does this while maintaining a special domain re-direct that allows search engines to pick up on those source links, even though they've been shortened.
When released, these extra features will set Su.pr apart from the rest of the pack. In the meantime, it's a pretty snappy URL shortener that, like the DiggBar, makes it easy to share links with what is potentially a very large audience with little effort.
If you're interested in using Su.pr ahead of when it opens up to everyone, you can sign up using the invite code suprww. There are only 250, so get 'em while they're hot.
Amid stormy economic seas, auction giant eBay has thrown overboard StumbleUpon, the recommendation and "discovery" start-up that it purchased in 2007 for approximately $75 million.
Replacing corny nautical puns with corny alcohol puns, this looks like a symptom of the hangover that followed eBay's acquisition binge during Web 2.0's heyday. Even though many speculated that eBay would use StumbleUpon's technology to power product recommendations, the two companies just didn't find a fit--or a way to make a decent return. eBay's acquisition habits have been more vocally criticized when it comes to Skype, the online telephony start-up that was acquired for $2.6 billion in 2005. It's a well-received product, but never had an obvious niche within eBay and observers have long speculated it would do better on its own.
Financial terms of the StumbleUpon spinoff were not disclosed, but it appears that the company was sold back to the two founders, Garrett Camp (who will serve as CEO) and Geoff Smith, and investors Accel Partners, August Capital, and Ram Shriram of Sherpalo Ventures.
"We are grateful to eBay for its guidance. However, we realized there were few long-term synergies between the two businesses. It is best for us to part ways and focus on our respective strengths," Camp said in a statement. "This change makes it possible for StumbleUpon to continue to innovate and focus on becoming the Web's largest recommendation service."
Last fall, a rumor spread that eBay had hired investment bank Deutsche Bank to help find a buyer for StumbleUpon.
The big question now: Will it do the same with Skype?
The launch of the DiggBar on Thursday was big news. Not only for URL-shortening services, but for the idea of one site bringing some of its features along for the ride, even when a user has left it to go somewhere else.
The idea is not new, though; some services have been doing it for years. We've put together a list of some of the big sites that do it, and why it matters.
Google/Ask/Yahoo/Live Image Search
Searching for images on Yahoo keeps the search UI with you, and gives you a quick way back.
(Credit: CNET )Searching for images on Google, Ask, Live, and Yahoo all bring along a framed toolbar, or a special framed bar that segments the content. When you click on an image from the results on any of these engines it keeps a little frame on the top of the page that gives you copyright and size information, along with a link to the full-quality version. More importantly though, it lets users start another search or simply hop back to the results page.
Why it's important: All routes go back to the search results--and more importantly, back to the ads that were on the page. If the company can get you to start another search, that's another ad impression. Also, from a user's point of view, it's comforting to have a quick breadcrumb trail to get yourself out of there if it's a page you didn't want to end up on, especially if it's coded to keep your back button from letting you leave the page.
Facebook's sneaky link bar is not as advanced as some of the others on this list, but lets you comment and share on outgoing links from the popular social network.
(Credit: CNET)Facebook has had a link sharing feature since late 2006. Only recently, however did shared links come with a navigation bar that comes with the users when they click off-site links. The bar includes who posted the item (in case you're passing along something one of your friends originally shared), as well as the option to add your own comment, or re-share it to your news feed or to other Facebook buddies.
Why it's important: Like what the search engines do for images, Facebook is doing for any link its users share. It simply adds some of Facebook's features like commenting and re-sharing, right on top of the site. It's a much bigger deal for Facebook users though, since for anything that needs a lot of real estate, they can check it out in its original location (read: out of Facebook's limited-size news feed), all without feeling like they've left the site.
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Diddit, a site that allows users to share life experiences with others, announced Friday that its "diddits" and "wanna dos" can now be shared with other social networks. Users will be able to deploy new Diddit widgets, showing their lists of what they've done ("diddits") and would like to do ("wanna dos") on their blogs or personal Web sites. With the help of Twitter integration, Diddit users will be able to automatically tweet any of their "diddits" to their followers. Users will also be able to sign in through Facebook Connect.
Search Cloudlet, a Firefox add-on that adds tag clouds to Google results, announced Friday that it has launched the same feature for Twitter. Once installed in Firefox version 2.0 and up, the add-on inserts a tag cloud at the top of Twitter Search results, showing the most common keywords in the results. Users can click a particular tag and filter results based on that keyword. The same cloud feature is also available in individual user profiles.
Online discovery site StumbleUpon is set to launch a URL-shortening service called su.pr, TechCrunch is reporting. According to the report, StumbleUpon will be used to share links on Twitter and Facebook. So far, no launch date has been confirmed, but the service should be available in the next few weeks, the publication says.
Openfilm.com, a video-sharing network for independent filmmakers, announced Friday that it has launched an ad revenue-sharing program for all OpenFilm content providers. According to the company, it will share 50 percent of advertising revenue with filmmakers. Every filmmaker on the site is automatically eligible to participate in the revenue-sharing deal and users will be able to track their earnings through a new reporting interface on the site. All funds will be transferred through PayPal or accepted alternatives that were not disclosed. The revenue-sharing program is live now.
MySpace has launched its second annual MySpace Bracket Challenge, the company announced Friday. This year, MySpace users will able to "go head-to-head" predicting the outcome of the NCAA Basketball March Madness Tournament. Users will need to create their own brackets and choose the winners in each round. The person with the most correct game outcomes will receive $10,000. To participate, MySpace users will need to "friend" the Bracket Challenge profile and create a bracket. They have until Game 1 on March 19 to participate.
Taking a page from StumbleUpon and the now-defunct MySpace News, Digg appears set to roll out a new feature in beta that will bring some of the Digg.com experience along once users leave the social news site to one of its outbound links.
A Flickr photo shows the new toolbar in action. From it you can see that clicked stories gets both a special Digg-flavored short permalink (like TinyURL provides) along with a new menu bar that appears on the top of the content.
This new bar serves double duty. First it lets you keep an eye on how many other Diggs and comments a story has (regardless of whether it's been on Digg's front page), along with an option to see any related stories that have been featured on Digg.com. It also includes the option to share it with others as a Facebook note, an e-mail, a Digg shout, or a Twitter message. No matter how you do it though, the person getting the link will see the special Digg top bar.
Besides the sharing, one of the most obvious additions is the large, orange random button in the top corner. This will take you to a random site, which if you've ever used StumbleUpon, has the exact same functionality. Based on StumbleUpon going software-free just five months ago, and seeing a huge jump in its users, it's no wonder Digg would want the same kind of tool for its own links.
No word yet on when Digg is going to make this live on its story pages.
(via Veronica Belmont)
I stumbled upon a useful site earlier today that's worth sharing. Called SimilarWeb, this small Firefox (and soon Internet Explorer) add-on sits on the side of your browser and pulls up sites that are similar to the one you're currently on.
It works remarkably well--at least with major sites. For example, visiting YouTube brings up a long list of other video hosts. The same went for social news sites like Digg, Reddit, and Delicious. You can scroll through these and open them up in new tabs, or pick from one of the tags SimilarWeb believes to be related to that page. This will pull up an entirely new list of places it thinks you should visit.
What makes the service shine is that users can re-arrange the lists and submit new sites that are not yet in SimilarWeb's index. There are thumbs up and down buttons which can raise or lower a site's standing on the list. Down-voting any site will actually remove it from the list. As a result, if users continue to vote the list gets more accurate.
SimilarWeb tells you sites that are like the one you're on.
(Credit: CNET Networks)There is a notable downside to using this extension: your browsing performance will take a hit. For some reason it needs to load its own results before it loads the actual page, which in my case meant waiting an extra few seconds when visiting a new site. That might be a deal killer for some, although it can easily be avoided by learning the keyboard shortcut that dismisses it from running in the sidebar. You can also pull up the results from a drop down menu next to your browser's address bar.
SimilarWeb would make a good companion for the now toolbar-free StumbleUpon, which actually learns from your browsing habits to give you pages it thinks you'll like. Combined with this you'd get another avenue of exploration.
Here's an explanatory video from the site's about page. Worth noting is that you don't need to have your volume on.
SimilarWeb 3 from Similar on Vimeo.
StumbleUpon, an online discovery site that competes with Digg, Mixx, and Reddit, said Tuesday it has expanded its partner program to include Funny Or Die, Atom, Scientific American, and 5min.com.
StumbleUpon launched its partner program this fall with HowStuffWorks, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, and The Huffington Post. According to StumbleUpon, its partner program tools help sites' users find articles, photos, and videos indexed by StumbleUpon without heading to StumbleUpon's site, downloading its toolbar, or registering for an account.
StumbleUpon said its feature offer more exposure for its partner sites' best content and, in turn, increase the appeal of StumbleUpon and its discovery engine.
"StumbleUpon is fortunate to able to partner with these premier publishers to expose Stumbling on the Web to an even larger audience," Michael Buhr, general manager of StumbleUpon, said in a statement.
Whether adding a handful of partner sites will yield better results for StumbleUpon remains to be seen. But as the company's executives said when the program kicked off, they hope to open it up to all publishers soon.
On Tuesday night StumbleUpon is changing the way users interact with the service, ditching the need for a software-based browser toolbar in place of a small frame that loads on top of the Web site you're on. Users with the toolbar installed will still be getting the same experience, but the idea is that anyone can begin stumbling without having to install anything.
To get the Web toolbar to show up in the first place, users must now begin their stumbling experience from the StumbleUpon home page. The site is now broken up into categories. Once you've clicked on a link the experience begins, with the persistent toolbar following you from site to site and keeping track of your ratings to provide you with new stumbles.
Earlier this week, StumbleUpon founder Garrett Camp told me this was an idea that had been kicked around the office for years--six in fact, and the only reason it hadn't happened sooner is that Camp and others felt it would diminish the number of people who were populating the service with rated content. That number is still staggering, with more than 35,000 new URLs submitted every day by 6 million registered users. Camp hopes this new install and registration-free solution will make those numbers even larger, and improve some of the uptake as people get to try the service without that first hurdle.
In addition to its exploratory angle, StumbleUpon is introducing a new partner program. Sites that have StumbleUpon installed will be able to offer their users a new "Stumble This" button with a counter on it. When a user clicks this it adds to the number, which can help promote it for other StumbleUpon members. It's also got an option right underneath the counter that lets users jump to another piece of related content, something Camp says should drive traffic to other existing posts. It's worth noting this is different from the previously existing StumbleThru feature, which would do this randomly.
StumbleUpon's new home page will serve as a starting point to various bits of media, and exploring it no longer requires a software toolbar. (Click to enlarge.)
(Credit: StumbleUpon)The partner program is launching on four sites Tuesday night, including political blogging network The Huffington Post, HowStuffWorks, Rolling Stone online, and National Geographic. Of the four, Rolling Stone and National Geographic are the most interesting, as users will be able to explore the photo archives with the service's recommendation engine. Like service Photoree, which we checked out back in August, this can be a fun and engaging experience.
Camp says there are 10 other partnerships in the works, including several for video and music content. Eventually the system will be open for anyone to place it on their blog, although Camp says the system needs to be fine-tuned before it's ready for that.
The future of StumbleUpon
When I asked Camp for comment on the rumored sale of StumbleUpon from parent company eBay, he said he "couldn't talk about any rumors." However, what's interesting is that this new system could be ported over to eBay, or any other product site, which is something many were expecting when the company was acquired last year. "This does open us up," he said. "We're a lot more media focused, and this would allow us to do product discovery."
Presumably with such a system in place you could jump around the site and discover new products while rating them at the same time--something the auction site does not currently provide. Camp says StumbleUpon might one day provide that, but for now he says that realm has already been covered pretty well by search. "(We're) more interested in doing media stuff. There's a greater need for discovery than products right now."
The new StumbleUpon.com should be available right now. Camp says user profiles, reviews, and friends lists will get updated to match the new style in the coming weeks.
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(Credit:
Adrian Pike/TechCrunch)
A lucky Google user, Adrian Pike, has noticed something cool on search results: buttons to vote on links, much like Digg or StumbleUpon. He sent some screenshots over to TechCrunch.
The feature is being "bucket tested," meaning it's likely been rolled out to a handful of random Google users. As TechCrunch points out, it's not the first time that Google has experimented with voting on links.
Google has put out some official words on the test: "This experiment lets you influence your search experience by adding, moving, and removing search results. When you search for the same keywords again, you'll continue to see those changes." Users can additionally suggest changes to search results, something that Google says may be shared with other users. The explanation added that users will probably only see this feature for a few weeks before it returns to the drawing board.
There's a Google FAQ for it too, explaining that the feature is called "Edit Search Results." And blogger Justin Hileman has posted a detailed account of his experiences with it.
Learning personal search preferences could not only help make results more relevant, but could also add to Google's vast library of personal data and preferences, potentially for ad-serving purposes. It could also be applied to other areas of search, like images, news, and video, which many critics argue are tougher to index by algorithm alone.
But this is interesting for another reason: the persistent rumors that Google might buy Digg and use its technology to breathe some new life into Google News, which hasn't been growing as quickly as some of the company's other products. If Pike's screenshots are any indicator, this may mean that Google has been working to build something similar in-house instead.
Still, let's not get ahead of ourselves: right now, it looks like just a way to shape personal search results. And an experimental one at that.
This post was updated at 8:40 a.m. PT.
Media "discovery" site StumbleUpon announced Tuesday that its video service, Stumble Video, has a host of new content available: content sites College Humor, Funny or Die, and VBS.tv, as well as video-hosting sites Vimeo, DailyMotion, and Veoh.
Stumble Video, which uses past preferences to pick out videos that a member might like--in other words, a nifty procrastination tool--already amasses content from big sites like YouTube, MySpaceTV, and Metacafe.
StumbleUpon was acquired by eBay last year, about six months after it debuted the Stumble Video feature. There's also a specialized version of Stumble Video for Nintendo's Wii console.
Now go ruin your productivity level. As for me, Stumble Video just told me I might want to watch some Daft Punk videos.
