stumble-upon

 

I’m going to start my reviews with a great, well-known company – www.stumbleupon.com.  Basically, StumbleUpon is this great toolbar that you can install into your internet browser.  When you first set up an account, you tell StumbleUpon what your interests and hobbies are.  Based on that, they will display different websites to you that have bene given a high rating by other users with the same interests.

For example, let’s say you find ancient history very facinating.  You can set “ancient history” as an interest of yours, and when you hit the “stumble” button, they will show you a website related to ancient history.  If you like the website, you give it a “thumbs up”.  If you don’t, you can give it a “thumbs down”.  If you’re not sure of your opinion, you don’t have to give one.  Your ratings will affect what future viewers will see because obviously they are only going to show the best rated websites first.

The reason why this toolbar is so effective is because it can literally track every site that the user visits, and use it to help individuals with similar interests.  For me particularly, SEO is something that I have recently wanted to learn a lot about.  When I do a search on Google or Yahoo, i’ll get some results that are similar, but it’s based on a mathematical algorithm.  When I do this search on StumbleUpon, math has nothing to do with it – it’s all about recommendations from other users.  To me, they’re like a very sophisticated search engine that helps you find the good sites that “you’ve always been looking for”.

For the individuals who hate downloading toolbars because of the fear of “spyware”, StumbleUpon can still offer the same service if you set up an account and log in directly on their website.  You can still hit the “stumble” button, make recommendations, and have it all stored in your profile without having to install anything on your computer.  For me, this is very helpful for when I’m at work, since I can’t install the toolbar there.