Into the Blogosphere - Stumble Upon

A long time ago (maybe 20 years or so) I was reading how in the future we would all have personalized newspapers and content coming into our lives each day. My thought was that this would come from traditional media such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Esquire, etc.

For the last few years, we have googled our way to content we want to read.
Some who are more sophisticated are now using RSS (really simple syndication) to bring content into our own "readers".

A few weeks ago, a few fellow bloggers introduced me to the new age of "Stumbling" at www.stumbleupon.com

"Using search engines to locate relevant content typically means hunting through pages of results. Rather than searching for quality web sites, StumbleUpon members are taken directly to web sites matching their personal interests and preferences."

Stumbleupon is collaborative and personal. Stumbleupon seems to learn about your interests via your preferences and the friends and sites you rank . My mediamensch website is a perfect example. I am not showing up very high on search engines for my stories about working on the George Clooney "Leatherheads" film or a conversation with a film producer who has an autobiographical film about being Elvis' bodyguard. My "friends" on stumbleupon are now able to read these and then their "friends of friends" are finding out about this as well.

I use the Stumbleupon toolbar. If I see a website or content that I like, I press the thumbs up icon. If I did not like it I would press the thumbs down.


Since I also list favorite movies, books, television shows, interests, etc. I can find others in the world with similar interests All the stumblers who like the TV show Seinfeld or the film "Godfather". According the their website, Stumble upon offers nearly 500 topics which users may choose to indicate their interests and preferences. The content I have encountered in my first weeks of using stumbleupon has been unique, humorous, informative and enjoyable.

What I enjoy about this site, is that it really starts to find the "essence" of the individual and matches you up with like minded people. Definitely an interesting way to further "flatten the world".

To see me on Stumbleupon just go to http://ewarrior.stumbleupon.com. If you like what you read or see, you can click to become a "friend".

Happy Stumbling!