StumbleUpon may cause head explosion

You know those funny, interesting, inspirational, and distracting  links emailed from friends?  StumbleUpon takes this concept to the next level in terms of scale.

StumbleUpon is a surfing tool for the web. Hit the stumble button and you get a new site (referred to as stumbling). Repeat as needed. Like channel surfing on TV, stumbling is very easy, and eats up a lot of time really fast.

What makes StumbleUpon different than channel surfing is that it's trying to learn about what you like. This is accomplished via a simple like/dislike interface. If you stumble upon something good, just hit the thumbs up button. What it's really doing is pairing you up like-minded stumblers. If I give something the thumbs up, you will get it in a future stumble - provided we liked similar things before.

This combination of powerful features with simple interface provides a great user experience that is as unique as the service:

The number of clicks don't matter

Like channel surfing, stumbling is so easy, that it feels perfectly natural to stumble through 5-10 sites before one hits one that "sticks". The whole point of stumbling is to bump into something along the way. It's the internet equivalent of a garage sale; you have to visit many in order to see something good.

There is no goal for the user

Actually there is a goal, it's just different than a lot of online services. The value of the service can be defined much like any other pastime: how much time it kills without boring the user. Or like a hobby: how much satisfaction one gets from it. You can't make shopping lists for garage sales, they just don't work that way.

The incredible efficiency of randomness

Sometimes you get it in the first shot. I just found out about lifeStraw, a water filter made for areas were water is unsafe to drink. It took one click. That was such an amazingly powerful click, that I took my garage sale analogies and sold them for 2 bits, because I don't need them anymore.

I stopped using StumbleUpon in 2006 after a year or so of heavy usage. Several months ago I received an email from them and made the mistake of opening it. Inside was a glowing grid of the week's top 25 stumbles related to design. In the back of my mind I appreciated the clever spin on a fairly tired marketing technique; how it complements their simple and powerful feature set; how it pulled me back in by adapting to the original behaviour of getting cool links via email from friends. The rest of the evening is blank because my head exploded.

History:

• Launched 2002 from Calgary Canada
• Angel Investor funded
• Sold for 75 million dollars to eBay 2007
• Over 8 million users as of July 2009
• Bought back by founders for undisclosed price in April 2009
• Small percentage of stumbles are "clearly marked advertisers"