Why StumbleUpon Makes a Difference

by Frank Jovine on 10/30/2008 in Community, Internet

I am sure I share the same views with many of you about StumbleUpon. Here’s a list of my 7 reasons why StumbleUpon makes a difference over many of its competitors.

1. Instant traffic: StumbleUpon can jump start almost any blog. TechJaws.com has seen more than 5000 daily unique visitors in one day that came from StumbleUpon. These bursts don’t happen often, but when they do its fun to watch!
2. Traffic by the numbers: StumbleUpon traffic equates for an average of 90% new visitors that are interested in your topic.
3. No Flame Wars: Digg and Reddit users hate you for any apparent reason just like the morons over at the Craigslist Computer Forums. Those services force topics upon people, but StumbleUpon just sends you the topics you’re most interesting in. I noticed that a Reddit user flamed one of my posts and I laughed because it had nothing to do with what I wrote, case and point they hate for no reason.
4. Uptime beats downtime: I have never noticed or received any outage notification using StumbleUpon. On the other hand, I can’t say the same about Digg.
5. International Exposure: While Digg is predominantly white, middle class Americans and Europeans, StumbleUpon has brought me international exposure from countries like Africa, Korea, and India.
6. Friends forever: Though this may not be the case as often as you like, you will find one that truly has a heart of gold. This is a friend who is willing to help, share stumbles, and stay in touch with you daily. I have a few of those friends, but one really comes to mind. They call her Sunshine, but her real name is Sandy and her blog is http://www.greenecocommunities.com/blog. I recommend that you visit this site as it affects all of us.
7. Subscribers are key: When people subscribe to your favorites they will see them in their What’s New tab. This can be a major traffic driver if you have hundreds of subscribers. I invite all of you to subscribe to my favorites by visiting my StumbleUpon page here.

Wish list: I wish that StumbleUpon Management would detail the rules for its members on what you can do and what you should not do. There have been many accounts banned recently, and it makes many of us walk on egg shells not knowing if we are following the rules accordingly.