Official StumbleUpon Blog

The New StumbleUpon:  Getting Everyone on the Same Page

Friday, December 05, 2008

Hi there. We've received lots of excellent feedback regarding the recent enhancements to the new site experience -- so far, our community have given a big thumbs-up to our new features and optimized design – thanks for your suggestions!

We rolled these changes out in phases to solicit your input and ensure reliability, but now, we're ready to make these changes permanent. On January 5, 2009, all StumbleUpon members will be switched over to the New StumbleUpon with the latest design, look and feel.

For those of you who have been with us for a long time, we appreciate your continued Stumbling. We know these changes affect you the most, but we've made the "Classic" design and subsequent interface available for as long as we could.

Our goal is to provide you with improved reliability and innovative features as our community grows – this new design strengthens our community by creating a unified site experience.

Many of the changes you'll find in The New StumbleUpon were requested by members like you. We've offered major improvements like:

• Stumble from anywhere, any computer, any browser—your Favorites and Reviews will be saved for you
• Stumble through your Favorites or the Favorites of others
• Change your password from the Web site or the Toolbar
• Embed photos and videos in your StumbleUpon blog
• Delete Liked and Discovered sites from your profile

We've made many more improvements; too many to list here. Take a closer look at The New StumbleUpon to learn more about our new site, or send us your feedback on the latest look and feel.

Thanks again for being part of StumbleUpon.

Keep Stumbling.

-- The StumbleUpon Team

Mozbar 3.28 & IEbar 3.12 now available!

Friday, November 28, 2008

Great news... we now have new versions of the toolbar available for both Firefox and Internet Explorer. The biggest improvements in these new versions is an improved "Not-for-me" Menu. In prior versions of the toolbar, there was just one thumbdown option, but in this version you have several ways of saying why you don't like a site.

How to use the new Thumbdown Menu
If you aren't interested in the content, you can continue to click thumbs down as you usually do. You'll start to see less content like it. However, if you actually do like the content but want to let us know it is a repeat stumble (ie, you've seen this funny picture before on a different blog, and don't need to see it again) you can click the arrow next to the thumbdown and select "Stumbled this before" to help us stop showing repeats . Alternatively, if you haven't seen this content before, but are seeing too much of this type of content (ie, I generally like cat photos, but I've been seeing too many of them lately) select "Too much like this lately", so we'll know to decrease the amount for you.

And last but not least, if you stumble upon a website which you really don't like, and you don't want to see any more pages from it ever again (ie, somebadblog.com), select Block this Domain from the thumbdown menu and we'll stop showing you any content from that site.

Using these new thumbdown options will help improve your stumble quality as well as the stumble quality for everyone else in the community. So please exercise your thumbs using these new options

-gmc

New partners now offer Stumbling on their sites!

Friday, November 21, 2008

We're happy to announce that Funny Or Die, Atom.com, Scientific American and 5min.com are the latest additions to StumbleUpon's Partner Program! Visitors to these sites can now Stumble through content and thumb-up pages, all without leaving these Web sites.

StumbleUpon’s Partner Program, launched in October 2008 with HowStuffWorks.com, National Geographic.com, RollingStone.com and HuffingtonPost.com, offers premier publishers a suite of tools to help visitors discover and share personally relevant content from their respective sites. Each partner has significant amounts of content within StumbleUpon's massive index, but with our new program, their visitors can Stumble through the best pages without visiting http://www.stumbleupon.com, downloading the StumbleUpon toolbar, or creating a StumbleUpon account.

Stumble through some of your favorite sites at http://www.stumbleupon.com/stumblethru.php.

To see all of our content partners, click here for more details on our Partner Program:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/about/partnerprogram.

Happy Stumbling!
--The StumbleUpon Team

Five Questions: Christine Boyle, StumbleUpon HR Manager

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Christine Boyle graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in Creative Writing. True to her StumbleUpon username, she writes poetry and loves the color yellow. Christine is a proud resident of Oakland, CA and enjoys dancing, electronic music, camping, and the arts. When Christine isn't working, she likes to spend time with her best friends Reiko and Tuere, her brother Dennis, and her boyfriend Sanne.

What's your role at StumbleUpon, and how long have you been with the company?
I currently lead HR and recruiting for StumbleUpon. I began working with the company in July of 2006 as a part-time Office Manager. As the company grew both online and off, my role took on many new shapes and forms. My most favorite part of my job is finding creative ways to make StumbleUpon a great place to work. In addition to HR and recruiting, I enjoy coordinating our internal and external StumbleUpon events.

What's surprised you most about working for StumbleUpon?
StumbleUpon's rapid growth has surprised me the most. I clearly remember my interview with gmc, Geoff and Justin; arriving at a tiny one-room office in downtown San Francisco with only a few desks and chairs. When I accepted the position of part-time Office Manager, I had no idea of the exciting professional journey I was about to embark on. In July 2006, there were just a handful of employees compared to the 30+ we have today, and only 1.5 million stumblers compared to the 6+ million we have today. It's been an amazing experience working here and for the first time in my life I can say, "I love my job!"

What can you tell us about the company art program you initiated?
In the early days at StumbleUpon, we asked each employee to select a poster and thumbtack it to the wall. While this spiced up our decor, the office somewhat resembled a college dorm. After several office redesigns and a waning interest in posters, the StumbleUpon art program took shape in Summer of 2008.

Every two months, emerging Bay Area artists and photographers will display their work throughout our office; in exchange, StumbleUpon will deliver traffic to their Web site. Not only does the program allow StumbleUpon employees to enjoy original art while working, it allows us to support talented artists in our community.

Ken Farkash was StumbleUpon's first featured artist, and you can see his work at www.kenfarkash.com. Kajahl Benes and Robin Winn are the current featured artists, and are showcasing their work through November 2008. If you're a Bay Area artist or photographer interested in participating in the StumbleUpon art program, please send me a message with your Web site. We'd love to work with local artists who are Stumblers!

When you tell people where you work, how do you describe StumbleUpon?
When I tell people where I work, I always describe my amazing group of colleagues. Similar to the StumbleUpon online community, the StumbleUpon employees are from all corners of the globe. Over ten languages are spoken fluently among us and many have traveled the world over. The StumbleUpon staff is made up of artists, writers, musicians, martial artists, athletes, poets, drummers, DJs, singers, photographers, bicyclists, scientists, parents, hobbyists and adventurers. We have a great team and all rally around our cause: to help people discover interesting content online.

If you didn't work at StumbleUpon, what do you think you might be doing?
If I didn't work at StumbleUpon, I would be getting in trouble for Stumbling at work in a job I didn't like

Everything Old is New Again!

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

StumbleUpon was created for just one reason: to help people share and discover Web sites with others who have similar interests.

Today, we've unveiled several changes that bring our mission of sharing and discovery to an even larger audience. For the first time ever, anyone can now Stumble the Web without having to register for StumbleUpon or download the StumbleUpon toolbar.

Are you a new visitor to StumbleUpon?

If this is your first time here, start by clicking through the Recommended Sites on our new Home page. If you'd rather begin with a single topic, choose one of the following categories:

Click one of the recommended sites, and a Stumble! button will appear in the upper left corner of your browser window.

• If you like the page, click the Stumble! button to save that site as a Favorite.
• To write a review that's visible to others, click the star icons
• To save your Favorites, click "Save Now"

To write a review or save your Favorites, you'll need to sign up for a free StumbleUpon membership.

Are you a StumbleUpon member?

Registered members enjoy all the benefits of StumbleUpon: a massive index of quality sites, freedom to interact with more than six million other Stumblers -- and now, there's some extra icing ton the cake!

To see what's new, join the Beta Group to access the new features:

http://beta.group.stumbleupon.com/

These improvements include:

• All-new profile pages
• Improved navigation helps you move quickly across StumbleUpon
• All-new Review page makes it easier to find related content and members
• Rate and review sites using the Toolbar -- or the Web site!

The current version of the Web Toolbar will not save Stumbling history for registered members, but we hope to have that major improvement online soon.

We know you'll have plenty of feedback to share about these new features -- if you find bugs or unexpected behavior, let us know via our Feedback page, or join the Beta Group to interact with other members and StumbleUpon staffers.

Subscribing to Interesting Stumblers

Friday, September 19, 2008

With the launch of the new StumbleUpon's friends system, you can easily subscribe to another stumbler whose content you enjoy, even if you aren't "friends" with them. Our recommendation engine now takes advantage of this new system to help you (the subscriber) discover interesting content from your favorite stumblers (people you're "subscribed to"), who will be indicated by a red-icon on the toolbar as you stumble.



So we encourage you to Invite some friends or click 'Subscribe to his/her Favorites' whenever you come across someone interesting on SU... you'll then be one of the first people to see the great new sites they discover. Also, we've designed it so that the more similar you are to people you subscribe to, the more often you’ll stumble upon their favorite sites - so the quality of your stumbles should continually improve as you subscribe to interesting new people

Happy Stumbling!

Friends and Subscribers: what’s changed?

Monday, September 15, 2008

Happy Tuesday! Starting tomorrow, we will be improving the way you can make Friends or follow another member's Stumbles -- here's what's different

• add more than 200 Friends
• befriend another member without following their Stumbles
• subscribe to another member's Stumbles without becoming their Friend
• members who've unsubscribed from StumbleUpon no longer appear as your Friend
• "Fans" will now be known as "Subscribers"
• Subscribers who are new StumbleUpon members appear at the top of your Subscribers list

For additional details, read GMC's full description of the changes:

http://blog.stumbleupon.com/friends_fans_changes

Interested in discussing these changes with other members? Join the ongoing conversation in the StumbleUpon discussion group: http://stumbleupon.group.stumbleupon.com/forum/97242/

Ask A Developer #1: Eric Goldberg

Monday, September 08, 2008

Eric Goldberg leads the Web Applications team at StumbleUpon. Originally from outside Flint, Michigan, Eric studied computer engineering and Japanese history at the University of Michigan and relocated to San Francisco in 2005.

Eric started working for StumbleUpon in late 2006 as project lead on StumbleVideo. When not programming or Stumbling, he enjoys San Francisco nightlife, traveling, the great outdoors, bicycling and cats. 

Q: A few months back I read in a discussion thread where SU was using something called a "sandbox." The person commenting was one who performs developmental work for SU. I believe his comment was in reference to thwarting the actions of spammers, but I am not sure. What is a "sandbox?" Exactly how is it used by SU?

A: In general terms, a sandbox is just an area of an application, website, or network where developers can test out new features or bug fixes without affecting the rest of the site. Developers at StumbleUpon use a copy of the production database to test against, so that we're sure that software we write has a diverse ecosystem of data to process. This makes it more likely that we will see problems or edge cases that we didn't previously envision.

It also helps the QA department test a variety of use cases that developers might not think of. For instance, our quality assurance engineer has many accounts, with various privacy settings, adult filters, ages, genders, locations, topics, etc. A well setup sandbox will allow him to interact with the site without modifying live data, and without having to work with a simplistic or reduced set of data.

I am not aware of a specific sandbox for anti-spam technologies, per se, but there continues to be exciting work done in the areas of anti-spam in various sandboxed development and testing environments at SU.

Q: How many times a week an average developer see the founding fathers?

A: It varies per developer and per team, but the founders are available and accessible to everyone in StumbleUpon. Geoff and Garrett work out of the San Francisco office; their desks are mingled amongst the engineering team. Justin works remotely in Canada.

Personally, I work the most with GMC because we work closely on web appllcation brainstorming, design, execution details, etc. Geoff and I work together a fair amount on security, anti-spam, and lately, a cool project we'll be unveiling in September. Justin works out of the Canada office, and is more involved with the business side of operations, so I don't interact with him very often - though he's a great conversationalist and very kind.

Q: What's the proportion of time spent fixing bugs, implementing new things, and doing research/trying experimental things?

A: Again, this varies per engineer and per week. I prefer to work on experimental and new features, especially projects that have the potential to earn me kudos from fellow Stumblers. However, there are always bugs in a network that seeks to do so much with so many kinds of data, so there's always a fire to fight.

I try to spend three days per week on a large project, one day per week helping other teams with requests, and one day fixing bugs and writing little enhancements that I've always wanted. For instance, check out the website review pages. You now can click on the "X hours ago" text for each review, and see the entry on the reviewer's blog. I just thought it would be cool to be able to get to the blog entry from a review, so added it in the other day when I had a few minutes.

Q: Why does StumbleUpon search find only tagged pages?

A: Until recently, we just haven't given searching StumbleUpon as much priority as the stumbling experience. However, the more reviews, tags, blog posts, and website we have, the more the need to be able to search through it all. We now have a project to pair several open-source search technologies with internal custom search technologies to create a much better searching experience for us all. This true indexed search feature should roll some time soon.

Q: Dear mystery-dev, why does the What's New page shows only thumb-up reviews?

A: Good question. There are a lot more things we can present here. I guess we haven't really revisited the What's New tab since we don't hear many complaints about it or feature suggestions.

I agree that it would be cool to see other information on this tab. What would you want to see?

Thanks for reading. If you'd like to ask a question of a StumbleUpon developer, post it here: http://stumbleupon.group.stumbleupon.com/forum/98943/. We'll select five questions to answer in our next edition.

Upcoming Friends and Fans Changes

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

A few days ago we released some changes to the Friends & Fans system, in preparation for a separation of "Friends" and "Subscription" functionality and removing the limit of 200 friends. Right now, when you add a friend you immediately subscribe to their stumbles, but some people have said that they would like to "opt-out" of stumbles from certain friends... people they know in real life but have different tastes in websites. There has also been some confusion over what a "Fan" is, and what a "Mutual Friend" is (when it is really more accurately a "reciprocal friend"). So we have a few changes in the works to improve this system.

Over the next couple weeks we are going to separate the social & content aspects of friendship on SU, so you can subscribe to someone's favorites without necessarily becoming their friend, and become someone's friend without necessarily seeing their stumbles. You'll also be able to "Subscribe" to more than 200 stumblers, since we've changed the way they are stored in the database. Mutuals will just be "Friends", fans will become "Subscribers" and you'll simply be "Subscribed to" stumblers who rate great content. We hope these changes will make things a bit easier to understand for new stumblers, while improving stumble quality for everyone.

During this transitionary period you may notice changes in your friend/fans list. You may have noticed that your # of fans has now dropped - this is because we are now removing "ghost" friends from this list... people who have left SU or deleted their accounts. Up until last friday, your Mutuals & Fans list may have contained some of the "ghost" accounts, but now it should only contain people who are still on SU. So if you see a drop, its not because alot of people have un-friended you, its just because we've finally fixed an old bug in the system You may also notice the order of your "Fans" has changed a bit... that it now shows the newest members to SU, rather than the last person who friended you. These issues (plus a few other bugs we are looking into) will also be fixed in the next week or so, after we change "Fans" to "Subscribers" and remove the 200 limit.

If you have any questions, feel free to Contact us or discuss these changes here: http://stumbleupon.group.stumbleupon.com/forum/97242/

-gmc

CH has left the building

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

One person can make a difference. Take Barry, for example.

A few years ago, Barry found a new online tool that let people easily discover and share Web sites. Genuinely engaged, he quickly became one of the service's most active members, regularly providing useful feedback to employees when he wasn't busy helping new members find their way around.

StumbleUpon soon realized what a friend they had in Barry, and in 2006, he was hired as Community Manager. In this position, Barry passionately represented the interests of millions of members, answered many thousands of questions and helped translate your feedback and suggestions into enhancements and new features that made StumbleUpon easier to use.

Because of his hard work, StumbleUpon's community is better off. We're recognizing his many contributions here because this is Barry's final week as an SU employee. We hope he'll continue to be an active member.

Barry is passing his baton to Walter, who's managed community and customer service for companies like Tribe.net and Salon.com. If you have a question or comment for the new guy, contact him directly at walterofsu-feedback (at) stumbleupon.com.

Thanks again, Barry!

-- The StumbleUpon Team