Stumble Upon – the basics

Most of my blogs are ‘old news’ to the web-hungry masses; the nocturnal surfers and the pixel-rich bon vivants – but for many these pages are filled with wonder, trepidation and regret…I digress

StumbleUpon is effectively a social bookmarking site and one of the best ways to

• Discover new websites, photos, videos on the web (Stumbling or reviewing ‘what’s new’)
• Tag, and visually archive your favorite sites/pages/videos
• Share your discoveries with people with similar interests all round the world

Getting Started

• Review the helpful video overview of StumbleUpon
• Join StumbleUpon
• Download the toolbar (Internet Explorer or Firefox)
• Find your friends already online either by the email locator or directly via their StumbleUpon Name (sandnsurf) or URL e.g. http://sandnsurf.stumbleupon.com/
• Update your profile with the ‘Preferences’ tab to edit your personal information, Interests and Public Profile. Change your color scheme, add an interesting photo and links to your blog or webpage
• Start Stumbling (click the SU icon on the left of the toolbar) - If you like a website or webpage you’re looking at, simply press the “Thumbs Up” button; if you don’t like it, “Thumbs Down”.

• Your friends have the option of sending you pages they really like and you will be notified with an inbox message as shown above. By clicking on this icon the ’shared’ page will appear for your viewing and ‘thumbing’ pleasure

Finding your way around

• What’s new is a great place to review the latest webpages archived and reviewed by your StumbleUpon friends
• Favorites displays all the webpages you have reviewed, discovered or posted to your blog and can be displayed as a grid or list
• Friends and Fans. When you visit the site of a stumbler who shares a similar taste you can add that Stumbler as a ‘friend’ this makes you a ‘fan’ of this stumbler. Your visit is recorded so that your fellow Stumbler can return the favor by visiting your site, adding you as a friend and that makes you ‘mutual friends’

• Tag your favorite pages with meaningful tags to help others find your Stumbled pages
• Make Friends. Share webpages and spread the word – 5,9000,000 other Stumblers can’t be wrong.
• Use StumbleUpon daily to archive your favorite pages for later retrieval; to stumble your friends favorites and make it a habit to use the ‘thumbs up/thumbs’ down toolbar options
• Read Some great reviews such as by MrGadgetOz on tips for using StumbleUpon or try  an ode to StumbleUpon  .
  
• You never know – with persistence you could be as happy as Shana Albert!