StumbleUpon is a discovery engine (a form of web search engine) that finds and recommends web content to its users. Its features allow users to discover and rate Web pages, photos, and videos that are personalized to their tastes and interests using peer-sourcing and social-networking principles.
StumbleUpon was founded in November 2001 by Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith, Justin LaFrance and Eric Boyd during Garrett's time in post-graduate school in Calgary, Canada.
Camp co-founded StumbleUpon in 2001 while doing post-graduate work in his native Canada. Since then, the company has been through its fair share of ups and downs — and Camp has been there through it all.
StumbleUpon was essentially run out of its co-founders’ bedrooms up until late 2005, when it took on $1.5 million in seed funding and moved to San Francisco.
The moment for him in which he felt the company had really taken off: "When we passed the half a million mark (in registered users), it seemed more real.
The popularity of the software attracted Silicon Valley investor Brad O'Neill to take notice of the company and assist with a move to San Francisco, as well as bringing in subsequent fund-raising totaling $1.2 million from other angel investors including Ram Shriram(Google), Mitch Kapor (Mozilla Foundation), First Round Capital, and Ron Conway.
Shortly thereafter in 2007,StumbleUpon was sold to eBay for $75 million. But like so many big M&A deals, the integration did not ultimately work out, and in 2009 Camp and one of his original co-founders Geoff Smith bought StumbleUpon back along with a group of investors.
Camp’s dedication to StumbleUpon through thick and thin seems unique in an industry where the label “serial entrepreneur” is often worn as a badge of honor.
Technology comes first – More than two-thirds of StumbleUpon’s 80 person staff is technical, said Camp, who himself is trained as a software engineer. “There’s so much technology under the hood. We’ve spent so much time making the system, and by now it’s pretty complex and advanced.”
“The idea of providing recommendations without knowing exactly what you want can be useful in so many places,” he said. “We’ve built this backend, and now we can focus on one or two platforms at a time. But the only limitation [for growth] is the number of engineers we have.”
StumbleUpon uses collaborative filtering which is an automated process combining human opinions with machine learning of personal preference, to create virtual communities of like-minded Web surfers. Rating Web sites update a personal profile (a blog-style record of rated sites) and generate peer networks of Web surfers linked by common interest.
Users rate a site by giving it a thumbs up, thumbs down selection on the StumbleUpon toolbar, and can optionally leave additional commentary on the site's review page, which also appears on the user's blog.
Giving a site a thumbs up results in the site being placed under the user's "favorites". Furthermore, users have the ability to stumble their personal interests like "History" or "Games".
In April 2007, StumbleUpon launched the StumbleThru service, allowing users of the toolbar to stumble within sites such as YouTube, The Onion, Public Broadcasting Service and Wikipedia.
As of June 13, 2010, sites using StumbleThru include BBC.com,Blogger, Break.com, CNN.com, Collegehumor, Flickr.com, FunnyorDie.com, Howstuffworks.com, HuffingtonPost.com,Metacafe.com, Pbs.org, PhysOrg, Rolling Stone, Scientific American, The Onion, Wikipedia, Wired.com, Wordpress, and
StumbleUpon uses knowledge of user preferences to deliver targeted advertising.
For example, those signed up for photography will occasionally see an ad related to photography. Such content is vetted by humans for "quality and relevance" prior to its delivery.
In August 2011, StumbleUpon reached 25 billion stumble mark, at which point they were adding over 1 billion stumbles per month. in October 2011, StumbleUpon announced that is had crossed 20 million registered users of the service.
Sources:
en.wikipedia
True Knowledge
gigaom
PCMag.com
StumbleUpon was founded in November 2001 by Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith, Justin LaFrance and Eric Boyd during Garrett's time in post-graduate school in Calgary, Canada.
Camp co-founded StumbleUpon in 2001 while doing post-graduate work in his native Canada. Since then, the company has been through its fair share of ups and downs — and Camp has been there through it all.
StumbleUpon was essentially run out of its co-founders’ bedrooms up until late 2005, when it took on $1.5 million in seed funding and moved to San Francisco.
The moment for him in which he felt the company had really taken off: "When we passed the half a million mark (in registered users), it seemed more real.
The popularity of the software attracted Silicon Valley investor Brad O'Neill to take notice of the company and assist with a move to San Francisco, as well as bringing in subsequent fund-raising totaling $1.2 million from other angel investors including Ram Shriram(Google), Mitch Kapor (Mozilla Foundation), First Round Capital, and Ron Conway.
Shortly thereafter in 2007,StumbleUpon was sold to eBay for $75 million. But like so many big M&A deals, the integration did not ultimately work out, and in 2009 Camp and one of his original co-founders Geoff Smith bought StumbleUpon back along with a group of investors.
Camp’s dedication to StumbleUpon through thick and thin seems unique in an industry where the label “serial entrepreneur” is often worn as a badge of honor.
Technology comes first – More than two-thirds of StumbleUpon’s 80 person staff is technical, said Camp, who himself is trained as a software engineer. “There’s so much technology under the hood. We’ve spent so much time making the system, and by now it’s pretty complex and advanced.”
“The idea of providing recommendations without knowing exactly what you want can be useful in so many places,” he said. “We’ve built this backend, and now we can focus on one or two platforms at a time. But the only limitation [for growth] is the number of engineers we have.”
StumbleUpon uses collaborative filtering which is an automated process combining human opinions with machine learning of personal preference, to create virtual communities of like-minded Web surfers. Rating Web sites update a personal profile (a blog-style record of rated sites) and generate peer networks of Web surfers linked by common interest.
Users rate a site by giving it a thumbs up, thumbs down selection on the StumbleUpon toolbar, and can optionally leave additional commentary on the site's review page, which also appears on the user's blog.
Giving a site a thumbs up results in the site being placed under the user's "favorites". Furthermore, users have the ability to stumble their personal interests like "History" or "Games".
In April 2007, StumbleUpon launched the StumbleThru service, allowing users of the toolbar to stumble within sites such as YouTube, The Onion, Public Broadcasting Service and Wikipedia.
As of June 13, 2010, sites using StumbleThru include BBC.com,Blogger, Break.com, CNN.com, Collegehumor, Flickr.com, FunnyorDie.com, Howstuffworks.com, HuffingtonPost.com,Metacafe.com, Pbs.org, PhysOrg, Rolling Stone, Scientific American, The Onion, Wikipedia, Wired.com, Wordpress, and
StumbleUpon uses knowledge of user preferences to deliver targeted advertising.
For example, those signed up for photography will occasionally see an ad related to photography. Such content is vetted by humans for "quality and relevance" prior to its delivery.
In August 2011, StumbleUpon reached 25 billion stumble mark, at which point they were adding over 1 billion stumbles per month. in October 2011, StumbleUpon announced that is had crossed 20 million registered users of the service.
Sources:
en.wikipedia
True Knowledge
gigaom
PCMag.com
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