Stumbling Through the Semester
In 2001 a group of men, Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith, Justin LaFrance, and Eric Boyd released StumbleUpon to the public. StumbleUpon is a random tour guide to the internet. The site allows you to choose from almost 500 topics and then searches the internet for sites of the user chosen topics. The user will press the stumble button and then be pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised by a new webpage in the browser. The sites include articles, pictures, videos, games, and social sites to name a few. Using a thumbs up or thumbs down button the user can rate a new webpage and StumbleUpon will use the user feedback to tailor future websites stumbled upon. Through constant feedback from users, StumbleUpon continuously updates and cuts down the sites that users see. So the more the user uses the website the more satisfied the user should be based on what the user has chosen to give good ratings. Another aspect of StumbleUpon is the ability to see the sites friends and other users have recommended to view, turning the surprise into a little more of a calculated decision. Ultimately this site led to the further procrastination and distraction issues for college students.
A new theme in all networking sites at this time is linking networking sites together. StumbleUpon takes full advantage of this by using email, Facebook, and even LinkedIn sites to find friends that Stumble as well. One can then interact with friends and communities to explore the internet in a new way increasing everyone’s awareness of what exists on the web. So while StumbleUpon broadens its horizons with other networking sites, it also does something revolutionary for the internet. StumbleUpon filters out all the bogus websites on the internet and allows the best sites to shine and be broadcast to internet users. So within the giant network of the internet there finally exists a tool that allows us to randomly discover the best websites for our interests. Not even Google can do that. All current search engines simply give what is wanted. What StumbleUpon has allowed internet users to do is to say “what if I don’t know what I want.” And then provides an avenue for those people to discover what they may have wanted to find.