Searching for your fave sites can be time-consuming, but StumbleUpon has found one of the best ways to list recommended sites, photos and videos. The Web discovery tool hasn’t stoped improving its technology, founder Garrett Camp told DigitalJournal.com.
Digital Journal’s Mavericks of 2008 series profile 10 trailblazers in various industries, allowing readers to learn more about the innovators and risk-takers who are making an impact in 2008. This is the final profile in the 10-day series. See below for the other Mavericks.
Digital Journal — Garrett Camp call his website a remote control for the Web. He isn’t exaggerating: StumbleUpon acts as a Web discovery service, allowing users to search through millions of user-submitted articles, sites, photos and videos grouped by category. Available free since 2001, the recommendation-friendly site isn’t resting on its laurels; Camp says he is experimenting with new features and hopes to make the discovery process even more intelligent. He predicts the site will win over many more Web surfers in the next few years.
StumbleUpon flies in the face of search engines like Google. Members who download the free StumbleUpon toolbar for their browser can simply click the “stumble” button to find a recommended website the site’s community decides is worthy. So if you like photography, and you set your preferences to find photo sites, the “stumble” button shuttles you to a site or article relating to that interest. You can “like” or “dislike” a site, which adds it to your profile’s bookmarks, and you can also write a review and send the link to friends.
StumbleUpon became such a hit, it grew to 600,000 registered members within four years of its launch. Camp, who was still attending the University of Calgary at the time, raised $1.5 million in investment money. Wall Street took notice.
Not surprisingly, the website found love from a new media giant. eBay bought StumbleUpon for $75 million last year, and so far the gamble has paid off — approximately 12 million “stumbles” occur daily and the site has attracted five million registered members. Camp now lives in San Francisco because he wanted to be close to the action in Silicon Valley.
Despite the big cash-in by selling StumbleUpon, Camp still speaks modestly and it doesn’t look like the power, fame and money has gone to his head. The day DigitalJournal.com met him, he was wearing a simple collared shirt and he ordered chicken fingers and fries over our lunch-time interview.
StumbleUpon’s impressive traffic is making advertisers salivate and they’re jumping on board. StumbleUpon has partnered with video hubs like YouTube and Metacafe to allow members to search through those sites. And some companies are paying for sponsored links to be included in random “stumbles,” based on the user’s subject preferences.
On the horizon are new innovations to improve the site’s intuitive algorithm that helps you find the sites you care about. In an interview with DigitalJournal.com in downtown Toronto, where he was speaking at the mesh 2008 conference, 29-year-old Camp spoke about keeping StumbleUpon fresh, why it’s different than Digg and how the site’s community keeps spam out of their stumbling.
DigitalJournal.com: How is StumbleUpon different than Digg or bookmarking site del.icio.us?
Garrett Camp: We’re similar to Digg in the sense that we work on a community-based popularity model: We show you what people have voted up recently, what’s popular and going viral. Digg is a discovery service, somewhat, but their main focus is technology and politics. StumbleUpon also adds cool stuff from the past, not only in the past 24 hours. The majority of people on Digg see the same thing. No two people get the same stumble at the exact same time on our site.
And del.icio.us is a great way to organize bookmarks, and searching through other people’s favourite sites is secondary. On StumbleUpon, you can add “friends” to see what they voted up and reviewed. It’s the best way to find what’s hot on the Web. And since we’re part of your browser, it’s more of a personal tool.
DigitalJournal.com: But can’t someone continuously plug their own website and service on StumbleUpon?
Camp: If someone is promoting their own site, we have a lot of checks in place. I can’t go into details because that would help the bad guys. We can monitor what you’re rating, and see the repetition of what sites are being rated to determine your credibility. If it looks like spam, it can be flagged as spam.
We also like to have the site self-regulated by the community. If you get more thumbs-down scores, you get less attention and the StumbleUpon community ignores you. I prefer the members acting as monitors instead of us blocking someone outright.
DigitalJournal.com: I’ve noticed StumbleUpon has some social networking features, like adding friends to your profile. Is this going to be a new focus for the site?
Camp: We have groups and friends so that five million browsers can share content between each in a way that’s never been done before. But we plan on staying focused on content. We don’t want to add chat or bulletin notices or event posting. Our core priority is how we can make discovering the Web easier and smarter.
DigitalJournal.com: So how will you strengthen that experience as the years progress? What is in the works?
Camp: We want to improve the quality of recommendations. When you stumble on a bunch of sites, perhaps only a few are awesome, several are mediocre and you come across a few bad ones. We want to filter out the really bad stuff. We’ve hired researchers to tweak our algorithm to deliver the best recommendations, which is still a new field right now.
We also want to be embeddable in more websites, not just our partners [like YouTube and MySpace]. We want Web discovery to be ubiquitous so you can go to any website and stumble upon something very cool within that site. So imagine if you went to flickr and StumbleUpon was available for the site, allowing you to find the best photos on flickr. Right now, we have 15 partner websites but why not make StumbleUpon more flexible and add it to any website you want?
Mavericks Series
This is the final profile in a 10-part series on Mavericks of 2008, focusing on trailblazers in various fields, from Internet to photography to music. Every day, DigitalJournal.com readers learned about a new industry maverick. See below for the other Mavericks profiled on DigitalJournal.com.
Other Mavericks:
– Ron Deibert, creator of Psiphon software: Psiphon is a censorship-fighting tool, allowing those in oppressive regimes to access any website.
– Jayant Agarwalla, the inventor of the Scrabulous game: Scrabulous riffs off the classic Scrabble board game, and it’s become the center of a controversial lawsuit launched by Hasbro and Mattel.
– Nikki Yanofsky, a 14-year-old jazz singer: Yanofsky is a teenage jazz prodigy who’s already played Carnegie Hall and jazz festivals, giving audiences a taste of the talent brewing in her golden voice.
– Phil Borges, a photographer capturing the forgotten cultures of indigenous tribes: Passionate about foreign ways of life, Seattle-based Phil Borges wants to let the West know about endangered tribes and villages through his impacting photographs.
– Ben Popken, editor of blog The Consumerist: Few blogs fight for consumer rights as well as The Consumerist, which criticizes corporate scams big and small.
– Ausma Khan, editor of Muslim Girl magazine: Targeting an oft-misaligned demographic, Muslim Girl gives Islamic teens role models and advice on modern Muslim-American living.
– Patrice Desilets, creative director of gaming company Ubisoft: Game publisher Ubisoft is experimenting with new technologies and stretching its lineup past its Tom Clancy series.
– Pattie Maes, the woman creating human-tech relationships: As founder of MIT’s Ambient Intelligence Group, Maes is bringing wildly inventive gadgets to our digital future.
– Jakob Trollback, a daring digital designer: Founder of Trollback + Company, Jakob has worked on stylish rebranding campaigns for HBO and CBS, while also dipping his feet into movie opening titles and music videos.
