Tired of Being Overwhelmed by the Web?

I just spent some of the most interesting time on the web that I think I have spent in years.

I took the advice of a business confidant who said to me “check out this site. it will make the web fun again”.

“How”, I wondered “can this site actually make the web fun again?” I mean the web is a tool, right? It is, of course, unwieldy and tiresome, but it is a tool. I decided to try this site out and see what his hubbub was all about.

www.stumbleupon.com was all he said and then some. I was bouncing around the web to sites I may never have found it if I had just used google. Don’t get me wrong, I love google. It always finds me stuff that I am looking for. Heck, it even finds me stuff I do not know that I am looking for. It’s the gold standard of search engines. It is, to web searching, what the Yellow Pages were to business and person listings, in the olden days. (oops, sorry to my high school grad class, but we are old now.). The problem with Google is that it has allowed itself to be co-opted by [insert dramatic gasp here] Business!!! [loud discordant piano "da, da, daaaaaaa"]. I know what you are thinking. “what is he thinking? He’s for business.” yes, I am. I preach to many about how they need to do things to get them higher on Google, so Google will help their potential customers find them, but here is the deal; Google does not always find what a person wants to see when they do not know what they are looking for.

When on stumbleupon, I click on the areas that interest me such as cars, games, sports, business, marketing, interior design etc, then every time I hit stumble, the software pumps a relatively random website to me, that meets my parameters. If I like it, then I click on “like” and the stumbleupon will know better what I like and what I may want to see next. It also uses the feedback of others to assist me in finding sites I may like.

I spent the nite engrossed in sites that I do not know that I would have ever have “stumbled upon”. It was so much fun that it became an evening’s entertainment for myself and my wife, sitting around the computer and enjoying an evening in, cozied up like the days of the old radio shows.

I would like to think that for the first time I am actually on the cutting edge of a trend, but then I start noticing that site after site have stumbleupon logos like the twitter, facebook, linkedin, rss, myspace, etc etc etc links that are littered all over their websites. So this is not my personal discovery? So you are saying that there are already a whack of people who are already vetrans of stumbleupon? what of it? Should I be less interested in it just because they are already penetrating the web before I got there? I saw some great sites and I really learned a bunch.

For those of you that are working with me on projects related to improving the presentation of your website, use stumbleupon.com and go out and find some sites that you like. This will be a good chance to see what you want for your compnay site and business image.

For those of you that just want to surf and have fun or learn, check out this site and drink in some of the good that the web can be.

One apology, though; sorry that you will not get anything done tonight. It is kind of like hazing, it happened to me so I must make someone else suffer.

Rick C

1. Rick says:

   December 10, 2009 at 7:59 pm

   Thanks Linda. I have infected many people with it and they are digging it.

   Reply
2. Lara Hunter says:

   December 14, 2009 at 5:02 pm

   Certainly not a website to become engulfed in at the same time you’re trying to get work done. My fault, I was warned. Great website Rick, it will provide hours of fun in the weeks to come.

   Thanks!

   Reply