Maybe you've heard about it, maybe you haven't. In either case, let me tell you: Stumble Upon is the best thing that happened to the web as a whole since Google, period.

Stumble Upon is a web browser plugin that allows a user to discover webpages and content based on other user's appreciation and rating, a notion that's called a "recommendation system".
It's basically web browsing "a la carte", where each of the webpages on the menu are something you should potentially enjoy.

You browsing is done by random selection inside a category. Say you like football, well, clicking the "Stumble!" button inside the football category will yield you one of the most interesting sites about football available on the net, everytime. Fantastic. But I already had reviewed that awhile ago on AdKrispies.

What's now interesting is SU's "Sponsored Stumblers" program, which seems to have a much more interesting structure than Google AdWords, and better yield. And not without arguments for it:

a) Target the exact audience you want (only qualified viewers come to your site)
b) No clickthrough required (SU pays for every visit to your site, instead of every click on a word)
c) Get feedback from visitors (Stumblers can rate your site in the SU system, possibly making you a destination of choice)

Allan Stern of CenterNetworks has posted an interesting review of SU's Sponsored Stumblers program v.s. Google AdWords. In his final comments he notedly says that"... StumbleUpon is a great alternative to click based traffic in the sense that you get a continuous stream of interested visitors. The traffic is qualified in the sense that the visitors said they were interested in your topic or category. I believe StumbleUpon ads are a better source of visitors than using interstitial ads since the users will be in your desired category."

I'm curious, I'll give it a shot.

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Are you of those who think terms like "surfing the web" or "navigating" or "exploring the cyberspace" are way, way out? Well, you're absolutely right. The cool thing to do now is "stumbling". Stumbling upon webpages gives you the bragging right to say you've found the coolest thing, aaaall by yourself. Well, a small company called "StumbleUpon" decided they would help you do some wicked stumbling. And thanks to them, soon people will be able to say "Hey, I've Stumbled this today".

The system is pretty simple. You (freely) register to StumbleUpon, and download their toolbar. (I personally hate software that adds toolbars to my browser, but this is different. Way different.) Then, you click a few boxes identifying your main areas of interest. Say, you like "sports" and "movies", and also ummm, "food". And you're done for the registering part.

Now, the fun part. Everytime you click the little "Stumble!" button on your toolbar, you're presented with a random original and interesting webpage, featuring content of your preselected preference. And you can be certain it will be original and interesting because it has been chosen by users like YOU, who thought it was original and interesting. And of course if you have a webpage you recommend for stumbling, you can propose it to StumbleUpon, and they will add it to their Stumbling database. It's that good. It's that simple.

This means GOOD WEBBAGE GUARANTEED. Everytime you fall on a new page, you can vote if you like it, or don't like it. If too many people don't like the choice, it gets flushed out.

Folks, while this is not a search engine or the next Google, I predict it will become VERY BIG. I could go on talking about the possibilities of such an engine, but it's early and I didn't have breakfast yet. But, check out StumbleUpon rrrright now. It's worth a download.

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