The StumbleUpon toolbar is either the best or worst thing to ever happen to my web surfing. This little toolbar that plugs into your browser gives you the ability to be randomly taken to different web pages. To use the stumble toolbar you first input your interests. The web has been broken down into hundreds of categories that you can chose from. When you hit the stumble button you are taken to a random site from one of your chosen categories. Once at that site you can choose to either give the page a thumbs up or thumbs down. Once you start rating sites StumbleUpon will start sending you more pages from people with similar interests who have also given thumbs up or down to the same types of pages that you have.
I currently have 4,599 sites rated positively and probably more than that negatively. I’ve been a member of the StumbleUpon for less than 9 months. Do the math. The toolbar is like channel surfing on crack. You tend to see a lot of things that interest you and it can start to take up a lot of your time.
Another draw back to this service is the privacy issue. Your rankings are on there for anyone to see. This service is a marketers dream. It doesn’t get much easier than this to do target advertising. A while back EBay bought StumbleUpon but they have not done much with it. Personally I always felt this service would be a perfect match for Facebook. Target advertising would be simple, you could share stories and websites effortlessly with friends, it would combine the best of blogging with the best of social networking allowing you to connect with people of similar interests.
In any event, I highly recommend this service. It will really open up the web for you, taking you to all sorts of places you’ve never seen.