StumbleUpon is hot. The discovery and recommendation engine that makes web browsing a lot like channel surfing just announced it’s now handling 1 billion stumbles per month.
On top of that impressive number, StumbleUpon just closed a second round of funding in March, wrapping up $17 million of series B financing.
That 1 million stumbles-per-month statistic represents explosive growth, especially when you consider that since just a month ago, that number has grown by 200 million, judging from the fact that StumbleUpon publicized 800 million stumbles just last month, according to Business Insider.
Why is StumbleUpon growing so fast? In my opinion, because it’s fun. Moments of serendipity run rampant as you click the Stumble button to go to the next selected site, and every site you see is picked because of the detailed preferences you indicate in your profile. It gets even smarter about your preferences as you vote for sites by clicking either a thumbs-up or thumbs-down icon. And, because I’ve been using the service for the past six years, it’s gotten to know my preferences quite well, and its ability to predict what sites I’ll like has become positively uncanny.
In addition, it’s hard to tell you’re being advertised to, because StumbleUpon uses your same preferences to determine which paid sites to show you. I think that any business model that can figure out how to advertise to people without them even knowing it has a great chance of survival.
How about you, readers? Tell us about your experiences with StumbleUpon.
http://mashable.com/2011/04/09/stumbleupon-hits-1-billion-stumbles-per-month/
StumbleUpon's social makeover makes a splash
SAN FRANCISCO—StumbleUpon is emerging as a TV Guide to the Facebook masses.
The Web discovery destination has garnered gobs of traffic for its service that helps people zero in on Internet interests and share them across mobile devices and Facebook. It’s also caught the eyes of investors, who last month took a $17 million stake in the company for its promise as a next-generation social-sharing tool, not to mention advertising bonanza.
StumbleUpon has thrived where others haven’t because Facebook and Twitter became the venue of choice for sharing, says Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Land. “StumbleUpon is channel surfing, and that’s a behavior the online audience apparently wants to do and it translates really well to mobile.”
San Francisco-based StumbleUpon wasn’t the first company to gain massive traffic piggy-backed on Facebook. Also, others offer similar services, such as Reddit, Digg, Mixx and Posterous.
Still, CEO Garrett Camp, 32, is enjoying the spotlight in this growing category that owes much of its newfoundsuccess to the explosion of mobile phones and tablets. Camp attributes StumbleUpon’s growth, in part, to its ease of content surfing.
“People don’t want to type in URLs,” says Camp, explaining his service in an interview here. “They just want to click a button and find something cool.”
VIDEO: CEO Camp on the site's rising popularity
The company makes money on advertising and is uniquely situated to serve up people’s local interests to advertisers. That promise—to crack into the local ad market—has become something of a holy grail of Internet advertising as investors froth at the mouth over the prospects of an IPO from the likes of Groupon or Yelp.
What’s also driven people to StumbleUpon is the explosion in popularity of mobile devices.
Roughly 40% of its growth per month comes from mobile users. Camp first dipped his toe into mobile last summer with an iPad app. He’s since followed up with apps for the iPhone and Android phones. The app has been downloaded over 1 million times.
StumbleUpon is exploiting its difference from traditional search engines. Unlike Google, where keywords are king, StumbleUpon allows people to simply click a button to be served up videos, photos, websites and other Internet-delivered media.
“You might get two interesting sites from your friends, two sites from people with similar interests, find two photos that are trending on the Web ... a lot of cool stuff you never would have thought to search for,” Camp says.
StumbleUpon was bought by eBay for $75 million in 2007, but Camp felt stifled in a big company. In 2009, Camp and investors bought StumbleUpon back for $29 million in a bid to relaunch out from under the shadow of the auction giant. “We’re a more nimble startup now,” he says.
The timing couldn’t have been better. Now StumbleUpon is riding the enormous interest for social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
The social discovery service boasts 15 million monthly users, doubling since it came out from under eBay. Key metrics it touts include 600,000 new users a month and a StumbleUpon staff of 70 that’s double from a year ago.
Camp developed StumbleUpon from his native Calgary, Alberta, along with Geoff Smith, now company chief technology officer, as well as Eric Boyd and Justin LaFrance, both of whom have since left the company. They had relocated to San Francisco before the eBay acquisition.
“The fire and passion still existed, even though they had already sold the company,” says Sameer Gandhi, a partner with Accel Partners, a StumbleUpon investor. “They had an unrealized vision for the company.”
That passion sparked the recent investment round from venture capital firms Accel, August Capital and DAG Ventures.
But that doesn’t mean it’s time for rooftop shindigs, ping-pong tournaments and extensive navel-gazing at StumbleUpon. Unwilling to stay still, Camp and company want to refine their recipe, improve the user experience, and crash the TV party. The company’s Web-based “channel surfing” could mingle nicely inside big flat-panel TVs with the likes of services from Netflix, Vimeo and YouTube, according to StumbleUpon.
Like most unproven private companies, StumbleUpon won’t disclose revenue. The company is making money by serving up ads every twentieth time someone clicks to discover something. It remains yet to be seen whether StumbleUpon can ride the social wave all the way to the bank.
StumbleUpon isn’t Camp’s only Internet startup. Camp co-founded San Francisco-based Uber, a service that delivers private limos to users of its mobile app. To date, Benchmark Capital and marquee entrepreneurs have backed Uber with $12.5 million in funding. Uber has grown on launches in San Francisco and Palo Alto and is set for debut in New York City later this year.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2011-04-05-stumbleupon.htm
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