When observing the hundreds of social media websites that exist, StumbleUpon sets itself apart from the crowd by being completely unique. While many other sites use a cookie-cutter approach, StumbleUpon is truly unlike any other social media site. That unique approach is part of what makes it so attractive to users and marketers.
Here are 9 things that make StumbleUpon different from other social media websites:
1. It Sends Ongoing Traffic
With most social media sites, a popular submission will only receive traffic for a short time. It may last for a few days, but after that period of time the page will receive almost no traffic from that source. Even sites with thousands and thousands of active users, like Digg, typically only send a significant amount of traffic for a few days. However, StumbleUpon can send traffic for months and maybe even longer. The initial burst of traffic from SU may not be as big as with some other sites, but it will last much longer. This is just one reason why website owners love SU traffic.
2. Significant Traffic Can Come from Only a Few Thumbs Up
The traffic that comes from most social media sites is basically all or nothing. Popular pages may receive thousands of visitors, but pages that just missed becoming popular probably receive less than 100 visitors. There’s really no middle ground. With StumbleUpon you don’t have to have an immensely popular submission to get a few hundred visitors. Just a few users giving you a thumbs up and a review can cause a significant amount of traffic to follow.
3. The Random Stumble Feature
Of course, what really makes SU unique is the stumble feature, which will show you random pages (according to your interests and preferences) that other users like. You can even stumble through the pages that a particular friend has liked. While other social media sites allow you to see what others have voted for, the stumble feature is faster and more fun. If you have friends that like similar content as you, this is a great way to find new stuff.
4. The StumbleUpon Toolbar
Many of the major social media sites offer their own toolbar to be used in your browser, but StumbleUpon’s has more useful features than any of the others. With the toolbar you can of course stumble through pages, network with friends, share pages with others, and more. The best feature of the toolbar (in my opinion) is that you can very quickly and easily vote for pages or submit them to SU. No other social media site makes it so easy to vote.
5. Better Networking
Networking features are built in to most social media sites, but StumbleUpon outdoes its primary competitors. With SU it’s easy to add and maintain friends, join and participate in groups, and you can even send email to other users directly from StumbleUpon. I frequently use the StumbleUpon message system to communicate with my friends, even if the communication isn’t directly related to SU. The networking that I’ve been able to do on StumbleUpon has been more valuable than the networking I’ve done on all other social media sites combined.
6. People Actually Visit the “About” Pages
Most social media sites give you a place where you can write a brief profile of yourself, but these pages are rarely visited and read by other users. With StumbleUpon all users have an about page, and other users actually visit this page. From this page you can add a user as a friend, see what they have liked, send them a message, write a review of the user, and more. Your profile on StumbleUpon has much more potential to get some exposure and send traffic to your website than most social media profiles.
7. Less Significance of Who Submits an Item
With some sites, especially Digg, the profile of the user that submits an item has a huge influence on the chances of becoming popular. A top Digg user can submit a page that becomes popular, but if another user had submitted the page it may have only received 5 diggs and almost no traffic. With StumbleUpon, the profile of the user submitting an item doesn’t have quite as much of an influence on how many people see it and vote for it. Yes, it still helps to have a “top user” submit an item, but having an average user submitting the page doesn’t mean that it will likely receive no traffic.
8. Higher Time On Page and Number of Page Views
Social media traffic is notoriously impatient and this typically results in a short amount of time on the page and a low average number of pages viewed. This is still somewhat the case with StumbleUpon, but these numbers are much better than the same numbers representing traffic from other social media sites. SU users are a little bit more likely to explore a site and stick around for a few minutes.
9. Users Can Easily Explain Their Vote
The review feature of SU allows users to say anything they want about a page, positive or negative, which can be helpful to see why they are giving it a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Most social media sites allow users to leave comments, but in most cases you can’t see how someone is voting and the comment at the same time. Additionally, the reviews left on SU are generally more informative and productive than the comments left at other social media sites.
What other ways would you say that StumbleUpon is unique? Is there anything here that you particularly agree with or disagree with?
Originally Published February 3rd, 2008
32 comments from readers
1 jason Feb 3, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Excellent post. I couldn’t agree more with just about everything you’ve written. StumbleUpon is awesome… with room to be unique and creative while utilizing it…
great post… as always.
2 Steven Snell Feb 3, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Jason,
Thanks for your feedback. StumbleUpon is definitely my favorite social media site to use because of its features. Although it can be a bit confusing at first if you don’t know the site very well.
3 dedsused Feb 3, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Really great article about Stumbleupon features.
4 Jason Feb 4, 2008 at 5:17 am
Completely agree. It can, in fact, be confusing… Thanks!
5 LST Feb 4, 2008 at 5:42 am
I’ve been using it for a while and have found so many news sites both entertaining and informational!
6 Steven Snell Feb 4, 2008 at 5:54 am
LST,
I think that’s one of the things that people like about it so much is that you’re bound to find stuff that you like within your areas of interest. Thanks for your feedback.
7 Aakash Shah Feb 4, 2008 at 9:44 am
I have been using SU for about a year now.
The significance is that I am still receiving 100’s of visitors for the pages i created a year back. The page made to top of Digg and recieved 10’s of thousands of visitors from the site. But with SU i am still receiveing 1000s of visitors weekly.
Thank you SU.
8 Steven Snell Feb 4, 2008 at 9:48 am
Aakash,
That’s what I love most about SU.
9 Jabulon Feb 4, 2008 at 7:57 pm
there is a great point about SU that i’ve been contemplating for some time, and yet haven’t seen in any of the blogs. the main advantage with SU is that it quadruples the amount of pages one might otherwise come across. with SU, i can see 50 different pages in one session, and find some of the useful. before, surfing was lame and stale. where was all the content? should i google it all? what to google for? now, i can see hundreds, this in turn reestablishes the use of the internet itself. SU actually gives the internet meaning and a context, plus a friendly userbase.
how i love SU. social networking (with a toolbar) really is the future.
f*** digg
10 Ebony Feb 5, 2008 at 4:17 am
Way to generate yourself a bucketload of SU traffic.
11 Yvonne Bryan Feb 5, 2008 at 9:31 am
SU is informative, diversified, not distractive and easy to stumble. vonniebee
12 Announcing the Launch of Traffikd by Joe McLaughlin’s Blog Feb 5, 2008 at 9:44 am
[…] What Makes StumbleUpon Unique […]
13 Steven Snell Feb 5, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Jabulon,
The functionality of the toolbar is its main advantage, in my opinion.
Ebony,
Thanks
Yvonne,
Agreed. Thanks for your comment.
14 Jovatov Feb 6, 2008 at 4:54 am
I don’t agree on point 8. When I stumble most of the time (like 95%) I only read the stumbled article, and then stumble through. It’s very rare for me to actually explore the website more, I usually just stumble through. I think this is with more people.
However, on Digg, I stick around a little bit longer, becuase I already clicked on a link that I’m interested in.
15 Steven Snell Feb 6, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Jovatov,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I see you point. I think it partly depends on how you come across a site using SU. Personally, I tend to click-through to links directly from my friends profiles (looking at what they have stumbled) as opposed to actually using the stumble feature. I think this plays a role in how long a visitor will stick around.
16 Ruchir Chawdhry Feb 9, 2008 at 6:36 am
One of the reasons I really like StumbleUpon is because the visitors from SU have a really low bounce rate. On my blog it tends to be about 30-50% for SU visitors.
17 5 Flaws of Social Media Traffic | Traffikd Mar 3, 2008 at 4:45 pm
[…] can post frequently, develop high quality content, build a strong profile, and focus on sites like StumbleUpon that send lasting traffic rather than sites like […]
18 Gigi Mar 9, 2008 at 9:32 pm
I absolutely love StumbleUpon mostly I feel that I am learning so much! I believe that it is so user friendly. I built a blog that I am proud of and love to go back and remember what I tagged. I enjoy sending my finds to new SU friends and also receiving them from SU friends. The tool bar let’s the user choose what type of stumble you want. ie: photo, SU pages, video, news, etc. That way when I can listen to a video or two when I won’t disturb anyone I can. The freedom to connect with others ,Internationally, is amazing. I didn’t know that these kinds of social networking was even available. I only knew about myspace and facebook. That wasn’t for me. Most of all, I feel safe and powerful!
19 veronicaromm Mar 13, 2008 at 7:25 pm
I am a huge SU fan. It provides so much more opportunity for really getting to know people and the age range is certainly more mature than some other sites. It’s actually friendly.
20 Tejvan Pettinger Mar 15, 2008 at 4:16 am
Good article. The thing about SU is it sends traffic to my sites and I enjoy using it to find new articles like this.
21 10 Reasons Why I thumbed you Down on Stumbleupon | Net Writing Mar 17, 2008 at 12:22 am
[…] What Makes Stumbleupon Unique? […]
22 CraigTheCashGuy Mar 29, 2008 at 3:32 pm
I digg StumbleUpon! no pun intended.
23 What I’ve Learned from Starting a 2nd Blog | Traffikd Apr 1, 2008 at 4:05 pm
[…] Finding time to write for two blogs (plus some freelance writing) is difficult, but finding time to do promotional work is even worse. Content creation still fits into the schedule, but many other things don’t. During the first few months of my primary blog I was very active commenting on other blogs and writing guest posts, sometimes as many as 4 or 5 a week. I still write for other blogs, but now it is on a freelance (paid) basis, so I’m not building links and making the rounds to a lot of different blogs to get exposure. Traffikd has grown over the first two months, but certainly not to a point that I am satisfied. Most of the subscribers have come as a result of my primary blog or through finding the site via social media (primarily StumbleUpon). […]
24 Which Social Networks Provide the Best Design-Related Content? | Vandelay Website Design Apr 2, 2008 at 4:42 pm
[…] is probably the hottest social media network, and also the most unique. As a general site, StumbleUpon can be a source for any type of content, including web […]
25 Rhonda Apr 3, 2008 at 11:25 pm
I absolutely love StumbelUpon. I joined as a user 6 weeks ago. My profile is http://inspirationforch.stumbleupon.com. I have experienced a momentum of signficant traffic on a daily basis. SU has fantastic features and since joining it has added 2 more features for it’s users. I highly recommend SU!
26 Great Tool: How to Tell if a Site is Down | Super Blogging Apr 17, 2008 at 12:51 pm
[…] was using StumbleUpon a few days ago and came across an excellent tool that can easily let you know if a site is down or […]
27 Matt May 4, 2008 at 9:16 am
Hey, thanks a lot for this post. I had no idea how important SU was, and now I will focus on getting that up to speed.
28 The Costs of Over Reliance On Social Media Traffic | Traffikd May 6, 2008 at 4:32 pm
[…] you may be able to get to the front page of Digg or generate a bunch of traffic from StumbleUpon, but can you count on that happening next week? Next month? Next year? No, you really can’t. […]
29 StumbleUpon vs. Digg | Traffikd May 14, 2008 at 3:47 pm
[…] StumbleUpon is of course known for sending traffic over a longer period of time, whereas the Digg traffic dries up pretty quickly. I thought it would be interesting to compare the traffic from Digg to the traffic from StumbleUpon 6 months after the posts appeared on Digg. Overall, StumbleUpon has been a much larger source of traffic for me than Digg, because these are the only 4 posts that have ever had decent results with Digg. So this test is ignoring a number of posts that have done very well with StumbleUpon and not even been submitted to Digg, as well as those that only got a few Diggs. […]
30 flashy007 May 20, 2008 at 8:06 am
Stumbleupon by so far one of the best toolbars that actually find good content on any one topic. Great way to discover new content on the internet. Makes the internet a lot more interesting and fun. I use it all the time.
31 Drawing the Line Between Trolls and Constructive Criticism | Traffikd Jun 9, 2008 at 8:04 am
[…] of the most popular posts on this blog are the ones that focus on StumbleUpon (What Makes StumbleUpon Unique?, My StumbleUpon Wishlist, and 10 Ways to Be a Good StumbleUpon Friend). While those posts have also […]
32 A Small Blogger’s Guide to Social Media Marketing | Traffikd Jun 24, 2008 at 5:33 pm
[…] StumbleUpon is generally a good source of traffic for just about any type of blog. Unlike Digg, SU is not an all-or-nothing deal. You may be able to get hundreds or even thousands of new visitors with just a few thumbs up. And SU has so many categories that almost any content is a good fit. […]