The Horrors of Stumbleupon

Look I'm updating my blog! So soon too! Ok, lets get to the point of this post. The majority of my future blog posts will most likely be on topics found by stumbleupon. In this post, I will tell you all about stumbleupon, what it is, why its awesome, and why you should never use it.

Stumbleupon is a toolbar for your internet browser. Now, normally I am against adding toolbars to your browser because they are fraught with spyware and just aren't useful. Stumbleupon is different however, I haven't had any problems with it adding spyware to my computer, and it's highly addictive. Now, onto what it actually does.

Stumbleupon is a web based application(or a webapp) that is designed to bring you to websites that interest you. To start using stumbleupon, you go to their website, make an account(they're free) and start setting your interests. There are over 500 interests for you to choose from, however last time I checked there was a limit of 127 per account. Anyways, once you choose some interests you can start stumbling.

Here is the important part of the StumbleUpon toolbar.

Now, what stumbleupon does, is, whenever you hit the 'Stumble!' button, it will take you to a random web page that matches the interests you chose. So, say you chose Food, Art, Movies, and Photography as your interests; when pressing the button, it would take you only to sites related to those topics. Where it gets interesting is the thumbs up and thumbs down buttons. See, topics like food, art, movies, etc. are pretty broad topics, and you may not enjoy every webpage related to them. So, If you enjoy a website it takes you to, you click the 'I like it!' and it will add it to a list of your favorites accessible on the stumbleupon website and will show you more webpages like that. If, however, you do not enjoy it, for whatever reason, you click the thumbs down and it will stop showing you sites like it.

As time goes on, more and more of the sites you visit through stumbleupon will be of interest to you. This is where the horror of stumbleupon comes in. It's just so hard to stop stumbling. It's so common in fact, that should you choose humor as one of your topics, you'll frequently stumble onto webcomics or pictures making jokes about losing sleep or productivity because a 'just one more stumble' mentality will take hold.

I am quite addicted to stumbleupon and am constantly finding interesting topics or articles on a myriad of interests. These will most likely be the fodder for my posts, which is why I've introduced you to this horror. Stumbleupon can be an amazing tool, but it can kill productivity and make you a slave to the toolbar. Use at your own risk.

Disclaimer: StumbleUpon is an awesome webapp and I am in no way against it, I think its awesome and you should all use it, theres nothing wrong with it at all. (Or is it making me say that to get you hooked too? You'll never know!)