StumbleUpon: what it was, what happened to it and what to use today
The button that took you to a random website, from 25 million users to its shutdown in 2018
StumbleUpon was a web content discovery service that let its users find and rate web pages, photos, and videos personalized to their own tastes and those of their friends, using peer collaboration and social networking.
It was an effective way to discover new, useful content on the web, based on the user’s preferences and interests.
The platform was founded in November 2001 and became one of the leading content discovery tools on the Internet.
Users could “stumble upon” random web pages, like or dislike them, and send pages to their friends. This information was used to refine future content suggestions for users.
In 2018, StumbleUpon shut down and became Mix, a new platform that combined social bookmarking features with content curation.
Although StumbleUpon no longer exists as such, it left its mark on the web and played an important role in how many users discovered new and exciting content on the Internet.
What happened to StumbleUpon?
StumbleUpon no longer exists. It shut down on June 30, 2018, and its users’ accounts moved to Mix, another content discovery project backed by its founder, Garrett Camp. These were its key moments:
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 2001 | Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith, Justin LaFrance and Eric Boyd create it at the University of Calgary (Canada) |
| 2007 | eBay buys it for more than $75 million, when it has about 2.3 million users |
| 2009 | Its founders buy it back for $29 million. It is the social network that sends the most traffic to other websites in the US |
| 2012 | It passes 25 million registered users |
| 2018 | It shuts down on June 30 and accounts move to Mix |
A fun fact: Garrett Camp co-founded Uber in 2009, while he was still involved with StumbleUpon.
Technical aspects of StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon used a combination of machine learning techniques and peer collaboration to provide users with relevant, personalized content.
- Machine learning algorithm: StumbleUpon used an algorithm that learned from users’ interactions with content to improve its recommendations over time. This meant that the more you used StumbleUpon, the better it got at predicting what kind of content you might find interesting.
- Peer collaboration: Besides machine learning, StumbleUpon also used a recommendation system based on peer collaboration. This system looked at the ratings and behavior of users with similar interests to help predict what content a specific user might like.
- User interactions: StumbleUpon took into account user actions, such as likes, dislikes, and shared opinions, to further refine its recommendations. In addition, the web pages users chose to share with their friends were also taken into account to improve the recommendation system.
- Content categorization: StumbleUpon classified content into various categories and subcategories, which helped filter relevant content for users based on their preferences.
The combination of these techniques allowed StumbleUpon to offer a highly personalized and effective content discovery service.
User interactions on StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon’s recommendation engine was largely powered by user interactions.
These interactions carried a lot of weight in personalizing the content suggested to each individual user.
- Likes and dislikes: Every time a user stumbled upon a new page, they had the option to like it or dislike it. These actions were logged by StumbleUpon’s system and used to adjust future recommendations. For example, if a user liked several articles about gardening, StumbleUpon would learn that this user was interested in that topic and start recommending more gardening-related content.
- Sharing content: If a user found a page particularly interesting and decided to share it with friends on StumbleUpon, the system interpreted this action as a strong signal of interest in that content or topic. As a result, the user was more likely to receive similar content in future “stumbles.”
- Comments and reviews: Users could also leave comments and reviews on the pages they discovered. These interactions provided additional information about the user’s interests and could be used to further fine-tune recommendations.
- Following other users and interest lists: StumbleUpon let users follow other users and their interest lists, which also informed the algorithm about user preferences.
Together, all these interactions allowed StumbleUpon to better understand each user’s likes and dislikes, improving the accuracy of its recommendation system and ensuring that the suggested content was relevant and appealing to each individual user.
What StumbleUpon teaches anyone who lives off other platforms’ traffic
In 2009, StumbleUpon sent more visits to other websites than Facebook, YouTube or Twitter in the United States. Some blogs and online stores got a large share of their traffic from it. And that traffic disappeared along with the service.
The same thing happens when a social network changes its algorithm or stops showing links. These are borrowed visits: they arrive for as long as the platform wants them to.
Your own channel is the one that stays yours even if the platform shuts down: your website and your subscriber list. That’s why it pays to make the most of every visit you get from outside and invite those visitors to subscribe with a subscription form, so you can keep talking to them through email marketing.
Alternatives to StumbleUpon
- Mix: This is the platform StumbleUpon accounts moved to in 2018. It was created to discover, share and save interesting content from the web.
- Reddit: Although it’s not exactly like StumbleUpon, Reddit lets users discover a wide variety of content based on their interests. Users can subscribe to different “subreddits” that focus on specific topics.
- Pinterest: This platform lets users discover and share visually appealing content. Users can create and manage personal themed boards, where they can “pin” or save content.
- Instapaper: This service lets users save web content to read later and organize it into folders.
- Digg: Similar to Reddit, Digg offered users a variety of content based on their interests. Users could vote stories up or down, which determined their visibility on the platform. It has changed owners and format several times (in 2026 its relaunch shut down after two months), so check what state it’s in before using it.
- Flipboard: This news and social media app aggregates content from social news sources and presents stories in a magazine-style format for mobile.
Each of these alternatives has its own unique take on curation and content discovery, which means they can serve different needs depending on what you’re looking for.
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Frequently asked questions about StumbleUpon
What does StumbleUpon mean?
It comes from the phrase “to stumble upon”, which means to come across something by chance. That’s exactly what its button did: take you to a website you hadn’t searched for.
Can you still use StumbleUpon?
No. The service shut down on June 30, 2018, and its accounts moved to Mix. If you’re looking for something similar, check out the alternatives on this page.