First, Mayzel points out that the iframe isn’t actually anything new. “We have had the iFrame for years, but it appears some people think it’s brand new,” he said.

And while we’re on the subject of that ubiquitous iFrame, Mayzel said that the changes made to the StumbleBar were intended to enhance the Stumble experience. He said:

Under the previous implementation, signed-in users would accidentally click the ‘X’ in the web StumbleBar, after which there was no way to resume Stumbling without returning to StumbleUpon.com (frustrating many users). As a result, with the new version we modified the StumbleBar to minimize accidental closures by signed-in users. Signed-in users can still sign out via the ‘Gears’ menu. And as has always been the case, non-signed-in users can exit the web StumbleBar by clicking the ‘X’. We are evaluating alternative solutions to the current signed-in implementation, including providing the ability to surface the source link (underlying URL) through one of the second level menus (e.g. Share, Comments or Gears).

There’s one down. And in case any of you cynics are wondering how StumbleUpon knows that users were “accidentally” clicking the ‘X’ as opposed to intentionally clicking it, Mayzel told me that they determined users were in fact doing it by accident from information they gathered from usability studies and feedback from their user community, such as forums and focus groups.

So as for the removal of those direct links to the content sources?

The current implementation was designed to mitigate the confusion many users experienced when clicking to inconsistently implemented third party links from StumbleUpon.com (i.e., will or won’t there be a web StumbleBar on the page she clicked on). To address the concerns raised by SearchEngineLand et al. about the possible adverse impact of our current approach on SEO, we are working on adding direct links that refer back to the source content in a way that both minimizes user confusion and preserves SEO benefits.

And for anyone worried about the impact any of these changes might have on SEO value of the links indexed in StumbleUpon, Mayzel said, “We believe the changes have had minimal impact on SEO.” In the event that any unintended negative effects arise, he added that they are “working on adding direct links that refer back to the source content in a way that both minimizes user confusion and preserves SEO benefits.”

If you’re a regular Stumbler, do these clarifications alleviate any of the concerns you had about the recent changes to StumbleUpon? Let us know in the comments below.

As StumbleUpon makes these changes, one of the things they’ve begun to emphasize is the iframe at the top of the browser window that you use to navigate through pages as well as build up your profile so that StumbleUpon can optimize the quality of the content it funnels to you. In fact, they’ve relegated all of your activity through the iframe and guess what: you don’t have an option to remove the iframe.

If you’ve been using StumbleUpon for a while – at least before the big changes started to roll out last year – another of the things that may be apparent to you is the removal of any link that sends you back to the content sources. Unless you choose to log out and then view the site, you’re going to view the content through StumbleUpon whether you like it or not.

Brent Csutoras, writing for SearchEngineLand, noted the lack of controversy within the tech industry concerning this change. “When Digg did the same thing by launching their DiggBar,” he wrote, “the tech industry was up in arms and the DiggBar even had an option to close” – an option not available here with StumbleUpon’s new change.

At any rate, StumbleUpon’s giving you a little less flexibility when it comes to opting out of viewing content through their filter. Have the changes affected how you use StumbleUpon at all? Did you even notice? Let us know in the comments section below.

This year, StumbleUpon introduced the “explore box,” which gives users a way to stumble through content based a topic keyword of their choosing. The top terms from that feature have so far been (and it’s unclear whether this is the actual ranking):

1. love
2. funny
3. tattoo
4. games
5. diy
6. wedding
7. harry potter
8. hair
9. recipes
10. food

StumbleUpon also has the ability to stumble specifically through videos and photos. Here was the most stumbled video:

The top photo went to this bubble being popped at MojoMechanics.com.

The most popular mobile stumbles were photography site colerise.com on Android and http://www.xmarkjenkinsx.com/outside.html on iOS. The most stumbled on smartphones was “True Facts” at Funny2.com, and on tablets, “Expectations v.s Reality” at pleated-jeans.com.

Here, StumbleUpon also breaks it down by top stumbles for men and women, and the “most ____ stumble” of 2011 for the following adjectives: delicious, inspring, amusing, astounding, shared, beautiful, popular music and adorable.

Is StumbleUpon a significant source of traffic to your site? Let us know in the comments.

StumbleUpon has been redesigned. We had a phone conversation with CEO Garrett Camp, VP, Marketing Marc Leibowtz and Director of Communications Mike Mayzel, and the company tells us they consider the relaunch “the most significant and consumer-driven product announcement to date.”

Indeed, it has the potential to make the general StumbleUpon experience more relevant to users, while greatly increasing traffic to websites.

While the relaunch comes with a redesigned homepage, toolbar and even logo (the social button has yet to be updated at this point), it’s really all about two features. One feature, you may already be familiar with – the Explore Box. It’s been in beta for months, but with the relaunch, it’s not any longer, and will appear in the upper right-hand corner anytime someone is stumbling.

We wrote about the feature back in July. I said back then that it could be viewed as “a new way to search the web,” as it lets you stumble through content based on the keywords that you enter into the search box.

Camp tells us, however, “it’s not a full-on search engine,” noting that it has expanded StumbleUpon’s discovery engine from 500 topics to half a million interests. But it’s “not a search engine for everything.”

The second feature is the one you’ll probably more interested in, however. At least a business or a website owner.

That would be channels. Sites, celebrities, brands and businesses can set up their own profiles and get people to follow them on StumbleUpon. You know, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, etc.

Before, sites always had to worry about flooding the StumbleUponiverse (call it what you want) with too much content, and driving users away, or getting content out there at the right time, but this eliminates these worries. In fact, StumbleUpon is essentially encouraging sites to share everything they have by connecting their RSS feeds or Twitter accounts to their channels.

It’s still interwoven with StumbleUpon’s algorithms. Users who follow your channel will see more of your content in the mix as they’re stumbling like usual. StumbleUpon will also recommend your content to users who like similar sites. The company tells us they’ll be implementing more channel recommendation features over time. It won’t just be a one time thing at sign up.

The feature launched with 250 channel partners. Any brand can set up a channel, and once it’s approved by StumbleUpon, the brand’s channel will be live. Here’s what a couple of the launch partners had to say about the channels.

“We’re big believers in ‘discovery’ as the dominant way that people now find content, and we’re excited to be sharing our favorite technology and innovations with the StumbleUpon universe, which is one of biggest ways to discover on the Web today,” said Linda Boff, executive director, global digital marketing, GE.

“We are focused on building an Audi community in the places where our fans interact and share with one another,” says Audi of America Chief Marketing Officer Scott Keogh. “The prospect of someone literally Stumbling onto an Audi image, video, or news story that resonates on a personal level is truly remarkable. We love to see lifelong fans or even casual Audi enthusiasts expressing their natural passion for the brand in the spaces where they connect and share lives with one another.”

I don’t know about you, but I do a fair amount of my stumbling from my phone. This graph from Fast Company shows that mobile stumbling is indeed on the rise (which should also help your traffic – be sure to have mobile-friendly content):

The mobile apps will get access to the content that comes from the channels right away, but you won’t be able to manage your channels from the mobile apps at first, though from the sound of it, this will probably come in the future.

On the site, StumbleUpon users will be able to toggle between the new and old versions over the coming weeks.

Do you intend to promote a branded StumbleUpon channel? Thoughts about the redesign in general? Let us know in the comments.

View more daily infographic round-ups here.

Search Engine Journal looks at Porn vs. the Internet:

Source: Infographic: Porn vs The Internet [NSFW]

Halloween By the Numbers:

via

The Lifecycle of a page on StumbleUpon:

This is only in the US – globally Facebook still trumps all other sites by a large margin

If you are practicing PR in the US, and you’re including social media to extend the reach of your news content, you should reach to the 15 million loyal SU users in the US, enggement them and nurture those relationships.

Here’s how:

1. If you have not yet done so, create an account and set up a profile
2. Link to your SU profile in your About page or in your press contact listing
3. Add the StumbleUpon button to all your news pages (instructions here )
4. Start to build your network on SU, just as you do in any other social site
5. Get to know the members of the community
6. See who Stumbles the kind of content you have in your news releases, articles and videos
7. Stumble their content – it is not considered good form to Stumble your own content
8. Use the SU ads feature to promote your release headlines – it costs just 5c per impression and more than 60 000 brands have already used this paid discovery option
9. SU recently added a search feature to their site so it is more important than ever to have your news content indexed there

What makes this search function different is users are searching by interest, introducing thousands of new interests and millions of new websites.

As with any other social site StumbleUpon is not a quick fix. There is no one-shot way to tap into this traffic. You have to do the work and become a genuine member of the community. But at leastyou are investing time in the #1 social referrer.

If you have not used Stumble Upon before it will obviously not show up as a referrer to your website. Give it try – wouldn’t you rather spend time on a site that has the potential to send you 50% of your social traffic?

Caveat: do not drop out any currently successful actions. Keep doing what you are doing and add Stumble Upon to the mix.

Check out The Proactive Report for more articles by Sally Falkow

Until now, StumbleUpon allowed users to explore certain areas that most of the time remained relatively broad. Aside from the few specific “interest” categories like “Film Noir,” users were only able to explore categories like “Alternative Rock,” “Food,” or “American Literature.” StumbleUpon offered around 500 of these non-specific categories.

With the debut of the Explore Box, hundreds of thousands of more specific categories become available to users.

This afternoon, WebProNews got a chance to talk with Director of Communications Mike Mayzel and VP of marketing and business development Marc Leibowitz. We discussed the stumbling experience and how the new explore box fits in with their goals.

First off, the addition of a tool to make content discovery a little more specific is not a brand new idea for StumbleUpon. They said that they knew all along that this was a direction that they wanted to go. “A lot of engineering work was needed to make it possible,” they said. It was just about making sure that they had the resources to make it a reality.

I asked them why they wanted to make a more targeted stumbling experience, to which they brought up user feedback. Users told them that they enjoy the “serendipity of exploring broad topics,” but that it is sometimes “difficult to specify what they wanted to explore with precision.”

The Explore Box definitely allows for a more precise search.

But StumbleUpon is not moving towards becoming a search engine, they said. “Stumbling has always been a companion to search.” They added that it was a way to be surprised, to find things that you didn’t know were out there. That randomness is at the core of what makes stumbling what it is.

They said that they “ultimately have no ambitions of making this a search replacement.”

Search can sometimes be too specific, and StumbleUpon wants to leave some room for discovery. They discussed a “sweet spot,” a one to three word query inside their Explore Box that will allow users some specificity of topic but not too much. Targeted, but still random.

When asked about long-term goals of this new way to stumble, Mike and Marc discussed accessibility. They want StumbleUpon to feel “more familiar to more people.” People instinctively look for a box to type words into – that’s the nature of our search engine dominated lives. Until now, you couldn’t really do that with StumbleUpon (except for some users with a Firefox add-on).

“By enabling users to interact with StumbleUpon in this way, it will broaden the appeal to people used to using a box.”

StumbleUpon’s explore box runs on the same recommendation engine – one that’s personalized. If two people enter the same query, let’s say “Bacon,” the content that each person sees will differ.

The Explore Box will not only improve the experience of those who want to stumble more specific topics, they say, but it will also “make recommendations better and better” for those using the service in it’s traditional manner, through selecting less specific categories. The specificity of feedback that they receive via “likes” of content contained in more narrow categories will help them make everyone’s results better.

Finally, I asked Mike and Marc about the newer content discovery engine on the block, the Google+ Sparks feature. Both are former Google employees and say that they have a “lot of respect for what they do there.” I asked, more specifically, whether or not they saw Sparks as a direct competitor to StumbleUpon. They said that they aren’t quite sure what Sparks wants to be at this early stage, and they’re not entirely sure that Google does either.

Right now, they are just focused on what they’re doing.

Have you tried the new Explore Box? What do you think about the new targeted stumbling? Let us know in the comments.

StumbleUpon’s new Explore Box, however, is putting a little more targeted search into the experience. The new feature, which we told you about last month, is still in beta according to a press release.

The official StumbleUpon YouTube channel has released this short video explaining the new box. “Easily explore thousands of interests. When you’re interested in something new, the Explore Box has something for you.”

With the explore box, users can enter specific topics that they want to stumble – for instance, Lady Gaga, Vampires, Bourbon, Guitars. Once they begin stumbling that specific topic, they can easily opt out of it in the top toolbar and go back to stumbling all interests.

StumbleUpon already lets you narrow your stumbling down to categories, but those categories aren’t all that specific (Music, Art, Technology, American Literature, Alternative Rock). This new Explore Box expands the topics that you can stumble from around 500 to hundreds of thousands.

“Millions of people already enjoy stumbling to be entertained and inspired, and the Explore Box now makes content discovery easier for those who want a more precise way to explore their interests,” said Garrett Camp, StumbleUpon CEO and co-founder. “The Explore Box enables discovery for anything you want to learn about, and surfaces the hidden gems you can’t find anywhere else.”

The new feature definitely makes the “discovery engine” a little more like a search engine. But it shouldn’t take away from the randomness that makes StumbleUpon so much fun. For instance, my targeted exploration of “Bourbon” netted me articles about different types of Bourbon, recipes with Bourbon, the Bourbon-making process, the French House of Bourbon, and other tangential topics.

Martin Penner with the World Food Programme spoke in the following video, telling StumbleUpon users, “My colleagues at headquarters have told me that thanks to Stumblers like you, we’re able to feed 3,000 children.”

In a later tweet from the World Food Programme, they put they actually put the number at 5,000. Hopefully, it’s increased even more since then.

As you may know, drought has devastated East Africa, and hundreds of thousands of Somalis have gone to the camp seeking aid.

“When the disaster hit, the World Food Programme turned to StumbleUpon to help drive greater awareness of the situation and feed starving people in Dadaab,” explains StumbleUpon Ad Operations Associate Ben Hardy. “The WFP created a site that calls stumblers to either complete a quiz to feed a child or donate directly to feed people affected by this catastrophe.”

“StumbleUpon donated credit in our Paid Discovery marketing platform to the WFP that brought these donation sites directly to members of our community,” he adds. “By stumbling, sharing, and engaging with the WFP sites, you, our amazing Stumblers, helped feed over 5,000 starving people in urgent need of help.”

Along with this news, StumbleUpon has launched a new program called “Stumbling for Good,” where each month the company will donate Paid Discovery credit to three non-profit organizations. People can recommend organizations by emailing good@stumbleupon.com.

They good do a lot of good with this (as they’re already doing). The StumbleUpon button has now been clicked over 25 billion times, the company revealed in another tweet.

As a follower of the search industry, it’s particularly interesting to observe how content quality is handled with StumbleUpon – an area where Google has struggled and other new search engines have popped up with different approaches to solving. For example, Blekko takes a human curation approach to cleaning up search quality.

While we don’t often think of StumbleUpon in terms of search, it is similar in that it’s a tool you use to find content. The difference is that in many cases with search engines, you’re looking for very specific things. With a content discovery service like StumbleUpon (and even Google’s new Sparks feature in Google+) you’re looking for things related to certain topics, but not for anything in particular.

With a new feature that StumbleUpon is testing – the explore box – this “looking for information” aspect of StumbleUpon is emphasized even more. It allows you to drill down to very specific keywords – even more narrow than the topics StumbleUpon has become known for. And with the nature of StumbleUpon, users drive the highest quality content or at least the most appealing to the highest amount of visibility.

The company discussed how users can improve the quality of their own Stumbling experience in a blog post this week.

“As a human-curated discovery engine, StumbleUpon relies on our users to create a collection of the best content and information on the web,” said StumbleUpon Content Operations Program Manager Bruna De Goes. “We auto-magically identify most low-quality content, but sometimes nothing can beat the human brain’s ability to tell good content from bad.”

StumbleUpon users have four ways they can give content a “thumbs down”. These include: not for me, report spam, duplicate content, and block this domain.

Imagine if Google had these options on each search result. They did recently start letting users block domains from their own search results, and that data, Google said does influence overall search results in “high confidence” situations. But imagine the anarchy that might ensue if competitors and disgruntled customers were able to just hit a spam button on each search result. Blekko does that. What if Google let you hit a “duplicate content” button? How often would that be misinterpreted and send the wrong message to Google?

If you look at how StumbleUpon defines duplicate content, it explains it as: “you’ve stumbled this before. This option is useful especially when viral copyrighted content (photos or videos) are embedded in web pages for the purpose of getting a lot of traffic.”

What’s to stop a user from reporting the original as duplicate content, however, if they saw another site using it first? De Goes explains duplicate content slightly differently, saying: “You’ve already seen this content, and it looks like it was pulled from another source without referencing the original.”

It would be nice to know more about how StumbleUpon enforces its reports. It has a page about disputes here, but it doesn’t give a lot of insight into such enforcement.

You may recall how some application developers were affected by blocks on Facebook, despite having solid reputations among users. Facebook’s algorithm simply banned the apps altogether, affecting entire businesses. It would be a shame if sites were being majorly impacted by wrongful spam/duplicate content reporting. I’m not saying this is happening with StumbleUpon, but they could probably do more to make the process clearer.

Here’s what StumbleUpon considers to be poor quality content, according to its guidelines:

Duplicate content – The content of this website exists somewhere else on the internet and is not original. (Examples: A viral YouTube video embedded on a page that has already been submitted with its original YouTube URL. A photo slideshow that “steals” popular photos.)

Photo URLs – The only content on the page is the photo, with no way to navigate back to the source.

Here, StumbleUpon tells users to read the Wikipedia article on spam to identify it.

StumbleUpon has over 15 million members according to StumbleUpon social media manager Katie Gray, who said as much on Quora in late June. That’s apparently less than Google+ already has (which bodes well for Google’ sparks feature, which in my opinion is a direct competitor to StumbleUpon), but nothing to shake a stick at.