Use StumbleUpon.com for networking

Over the last few months, we have been using StumbleUpon (SU) for more and more business practices. The potential ways for manipulating StumbleUpon.com in your favor, are endless and although Stubling can be addictive, we recommend using this tool at the end of your work day, for any hour at a time.

Overview compliments of wikipedia.com:

StumbleUpon was founded in November 2001by Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith, Justin LaFrance and Eric Boyd during Garrett’s time in post-graduate school in Calgary, Canada. The idea of creating a company was established before the content: of the five or six ideas for products, StumbleUpon was chosen. Garrett describes in a BBC interview the moment for him in which he felt the company had really taken off: “When we passed the half a million mark (in registered users), it seemed more real.”

The popularity of the software attracted Silicon Valley investor Brad O’Neill to take notice of the company and assist with a move to San Francisco, as well as bringing in subsequent fund-raising totaling $1.2 million from other angel investors including Ram Shriram (Google), Mitch Kapor (Mozilla Foundation), First Round Capital, and Ron Conway. Garrett Camp and Geoff Smith now reside in San Francisco, where StumbleUpon is headquartered.

StumbleUpon was owned by eBay from May 2007, when it was acquired for $75,000,000,until April 2009, when Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith and several investors bought it back.StumbleUpon is now an independent, investor-backed startup once again, with offices in San Francisco and New York City (wikipedia.com).

In a nutshell:

In a nutshell, StubleUpon is a random website generator tool that lives on your internet browser(s)’ tool bar. When you click on the stumble button you will be immediately redirected to a website that SU thinks you may like. When you sign up for SU you will be asked to list up to 170 categories that you are interested in, and from here, you will start seeing web-pages that are involved with these potential categories. Once logged in and registered for your account, you will be able to click the Stumble button as many times as you wish and let the fun begin.

How this tool can help you:

Once you begin getting the hang of SU, you will see tons of potential for helping your business online. You now have access to your chosen 170 categories, and you can then filter your searches for whatever specific categories in which you wish to learn more, OR you are welcome to randomly stumble through all of your categories. The random searching is where this tool becomes extremely unproductive, time consuming, and highly addictive. We recommend filtering stumble for various purposes in which you can learn about your industry, current events of the day, your competition and discover opportunities of all sorts.

Let’s take a look at a few screen captures of what StubleUpon can do. I am interested in a wide variety of categories, so reader beware, some weird stuff might pop up…

When searching Randomly, here is what you may see:

… So I just hit the Stumble button, without any filter, and here is what popped up:

-An article on “How to treat others”  http://www.globalone.tv/profiles/blogs/how-to-treat-others-5-lessons

-An article about a creative workspace: http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/audrey-kawasakis-creative

-An current event article about the BP Oil spill: http://www.noort-innovations.nl/

-An article about redesigning a villa: http://www.examiner.com/x-20412-San-Diego-Interior-Decorating-Examiner~y2010m7d12-A-stunning-home-makeover-on-a-centuries-old-island

As you can see, I am not leaning a whole lot, or doing much productive work. Now let’s take a look at how valuable SU can be when we simply put a filter on it. You need to click on the drop down arrow, next to where it says “ALL” on your toolbar:

Once hitting this drop-down menu, you will instantly see ALL of your chosen categories. Pick one that you feel you can learn from, and then hit the Stumble button again. For example purposes, I am going to hit “marketing” which is under the “Commerce” category. Now, instead of getting all sorts of random (although they are extremely entertaining) results, I will be getting advice on marketing, facts and tips about marketing, and come across people that may want to be in business together. Just now, after selecting marketing and stumbling for 20 minutes, I have come across so much great information, and I have also added 5 interesting marketers to my list of people to get in contact with tomorrow. These people can help us promote/cross promote offers, suggest other people to help us out, etc. and the potential to find great stuff/people is never ending.

You can use StumbleUpon for all sorts of things but here is a list to recap some of what we just discussed:

-Market Research

-SEO opportunities by “thumbs upping” your own site

-Networking

-Industry current events

-Industry press releases and videos

-Potential threats to your business

-Potential opportunities

-Great how to tutorials

-And many more…

For more information about how stumble upon can help you, please read below:

Unleash The Power of StumbleUpon (The Social Networking Experiment …

As part of the Social Networking Experiment, I’m going to add a separate StumbleUpon button or link to my posts in order to see if I can grab more StumbleUpon traffic (and you can help by clicking it!). If you‘d like to add StumbleUpon …

Publish Date: 06/29/2010 8:08

http://www.my4hrworkweek.com/2010/06/unleash-the-power-of-stumbleupon-the-social-networking-experiment.html

Www.stumbleupon.com – Stumble Upon Stories About Anything | Snipsly

Stumbleupon.com is a page to publish social bookmarks about anything (just as pages like Digg.com, Mixx.com and others). Or, you can choose a category to start watching entries about any topic. Each entry or content could be a video, …

Publish Date: 07/12/2010 2:39

http://snipsly.com/2010/07/12/www-stumbleupon-com-%E2%80%93-stumble-upon-stories-about-anything/

StumbleUpon returns to the rank of investor-backed startup

StumbleUpon has been working as eBay Inc. subsidiary for the past two years, but now the web personalization engine has announced that an investor backed startup rank has been returned to it.

Publish Date: 04/14/2009 10:50

http://technologygear.net/stumbleupon-returns-to-the-rank-of-investor-backed-startup.html