Garrett Camp: Stumbling to Web-Channel-Surf!
Garrett Camp is the co-founder of StumbleUpon, a web browser plugin that allows its users to discover and rate webpages, photos, videos, and news articles. These webpages are typically presented when the user, or a Stumbler, clicks the “Stumble!” button on the browser’s toolbar. StumbleUpon chooses which new webpage to display based on the user’s ratings of previous pages, ratings by his/her friends, and by the ratings of users with similar interests. i.e. it is a recommendation system which uses peer and social networking principles. There is also one-click blogging built in as well. Users can rate, or choose not to rate, any webpage with a thumbs up or thumbs down, and clicking the Stumble button resembles “channel-surfing” the web.
In the same way that it matches users with like-minded websites, StumbleUpon’s technology also pairs online ads with targeted demographics and interests.Toolbar versions exist for Firefox, Mozilla Application Suite and Internet Explorer.
Camp came up with the idea as he was working on a master’s in software engineering. Frustrated while trying to find the best photo sites online, he created an early version of StumbleUpon with coding help from Justin LaFrance and Geoff Smith. Soon, they realized that the service could be used with all sorts of media, and not just the photos.
eBay acquired StumbleUpon in May of 2007 for $75,000,000 USD.
on October 26th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
[…] João Fernandes wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptGarrett Camp StumbleUpon.com. Garrett Camp is the co-founder of StumbleUpon, a web browser plugin that allows its users to discover and rate webpages, photos, videos, and news articles. These webpages are typically presented when the … […]
on November 1st, 2007 at 4:39 am
When I first heard about SU I though, Oh yeah, another one of those click traffic schemes that does nothing. Then I got stumbled, and I realised the people who were doing the stumbling were real people, and they actually like what they vote for. It’s possibly the best referral ever, actually much better than secret formulae that generate pagerank etc.