My MOM uses Stumbleupon!

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Stumble Upon is probably the latest craze that is getting bigger and bigger. I actually hear my MOM talk about stumble upon... apparently my sister was told about it through one of her friends who probably had been told about it through another friend... And my mom saw her doing it, thought it was cool, and decided to try. So I got this email the other day from my own mother about how she had found this cool site through stumble upon... When that happened, I knew that stumble upon and other social bookmarking sites are on the verge of becoming something HUGE. I'm talking, lookout myspace, here comes the next youtube. Then at work I overheard a woman who was in her 60s talk about how whenever she needed the latest news, or to check if a rumor was true she googled it. Now the younger generation is usually WAAY ahead of the rest of the world. When Youtube started booming shortly before google bought it out, everyone in their 30s and 40s was starting to catch on... the younger generation had known about it for the last year or two!
So if an older person talks about regularly using one form of technology... it's time to move onto the next... Now my mom uses the computer a lot, so she actually is usually only a little bit behind the youth in the recent craze. She found out about "the secret" while it was still being hyped up and before it was released, and months and months later it was on Oprah (which she loves) and it had kind of reached it's peak.
I go through a few things, some which become popular very quickly, others not for awhile... But one way I really know that something is going to catch on fast... is when it's related to something that's already popular, it's introduced in a new way, and one verification is when old people start using and talking about using the sites or technology that this new one replaces (in this case social bookmarking sites are replacing search engines). However, the ultimate verification is when my mom tells me about it! I know that it's starting to expand into a whole different target market, and that means it's probably spreading into other markets as well.
Stumble upon is real fun because you have a toolbar on the top which has a few buttons. One is "start stumbling", or "Stumble!" if you've already logged in. The other two are "I like it" and "I don't like it"... there are a few more buttons as well. If you click on the "stumble" button, you will be taken to a seemingly random site, but you are actually taken randomly with "weight" given to those that has more people that like the site. In this sense, the "rich get richer"... But of course, the stumble users will love this, because they are taken to sites chosen by the people for the people. There are also certain categories that you can choose, and you will only be taken to sites within those categories. If you only want to stumble your way onto games, you can choose "games" as your ONLY category. The result is visitors that WANT to be at your site... In addition, if you are searching the internet, and you "stumble upon" a site that you like, but found on your own through search engines, or whatever method you use... You can click "I like it" and a screen will pop up if this site has never been stumbled before, allowing you to pick a category, and write a description and a review. You can add your Top Stumbled sites to your "favorites" and you can build a list of friends, just as you would through digg. Since people aren't exactly searching for sites, you don't have to worry too much about keywords. You basically have stumble taking visitors to your site anyways. You can create a button for stumble upon... just as you would for Digg, or any other social bookmarking site, but because of the toolbar, you often don't even need a stumble button to get a lot of stumbles... A couple stumbles will lead to a few more, etc.... Of course, If you do add a button it will be more effective, and get you more adds.
Now if the interface is easy enough for my mom to use it... Anyone can, and it's probably going to catch on pretty fast... But if it ALSO has more advanced features -- when everyone else is just scratching the surface of what something can do, you should be diving into all of the features.
Now there will be tons of people just VIEWING these sites, thinking it's just random, and perhaps not even knowing what the "like it" and "don't like it" button do. And certainly not realizing that these websites are created by a community, and that you can choose categories, add friends, add sites, etc. Right now, I've just added a few of my sites, and added a few stumble buttons on my posts... But you can be sure that over the next few days, I'll be adding friends, becomming familiar with ALL of the features both on the toolbar and the sites themselves, implementing them, combining this witht he power of other sites like Digg, and developing a marketing plan around it. I'll update you with more info on how to use stumble upon soon, so subscribe to my blog, maybe even start using it and Stumble This Post so you can keep track of it.. and watch out for the next post I make about stumble.


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