Only Cute Girls Make Me Stumble
I’m pretty active on StumbleUpon. Have been for the six months I’ve been a member. I’ve rated a bunch of pages, I have a reasonable number of fans. And no reviews of my StumbleUpon home page.
In the grand scheme of things this is no big deal. My StumbleUpon profile is not the major focus of my social networking. But when I see users who’ve rated less than a hundred pages, who’ve picked up 50+ fans and have a bunch of reviews, it can be a bit galling.
StumbleUpon is a bit random like that though. More random than many other social networking sites. New members with apparently huge initial popularity. Long standing members like asiczek with pages of valuable, high quality stumbles with almost no fans.
Is it as random as it seems? I’ve noticed two trends that hold largely true. Things that make you more likely to succeed in gaining StumbleUpon popularity.
Show me you’re a woman
It doesn’t matter whether you are a woman. Just suggest that you are. Your icon needs to be a picture of a woman. Ideally one under the age of 40, and not wholly unattractive. Setting your profile so that you are listed as single and a woman also helps.
This is irrelevant of whether you’re selling sex. Your StumbleUpon interests and stumbled pages might be about web design, engineering, politics, the environment. It doesn’t matter. If you’re a woman and your icon is a picture of a girl, more people will add you as a friend. More people will give you reviews.
Why is this? There is not really any kind of social dynamic on StumbleUpon. There’s no suggestion that these women are selling themselves or making themselves open. They’re merely utilising StumbleUpon’s functionality to find good websites. I understand the internet encourages people to randomly stalk pretty girls, but through StumbleUpon?
Pretty pictures make people stop and look
Photographic images and graphic art are two staples of StumbleUpon. They work really well in the medium. They’re not time consuming to Stumble past. You can make a quick judgement call and give them a thumbs up/down.
Imagery is also the best way to take advantage of previews in the “What’s New” and the blog sections of StumbleUpon. If I see a new link that has a thumbnail of a great image, then I’m more likely to click it. If it’s a great article but the thumbnail is of a shoddy blog logo, then I may never look at it.
So stumbling lots of photographic sites makes your StumbleUpon homepage look attractive to visitors. It encourages them to stick around, look at a couple of your stumbles. And if they stick around then they’re more likely to take a moment to click ‘Add as a friend’.
But don’t worry about leveraging StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon isn’t the kind of site where you’re going to gain huge advantage from having lots of fans and lots of reviews. It’ll have a significant impact on the sites you stumble, but you’re not stumbling your own site…right?
In terms of advantage for you, for driving traffic to your site, it’s who stumbles you. So you want good fans yourself, not a scattergun selection. Even then the impact can be variable. You just need a decent number of people to give a stumble a thumbs up in that first hour or so, to give it the impetus to go crazy.
May 31st, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Personally, I’ve not seen much value in having your own StumbleUpon page Stumbled. I do think that you’re quite right about the value of an attractive StumbleUpon picture, at least in catching someone’s attention, but I don’t often find that picture equates to them being interested in the types of things that I like.
There’s more value in having people see and re-Stumble the stuff that you submit. IMHO.
Mark Dykemans last blog post..Is it better to be original or to echo
May 31st, 2008 at 9:04 pm
I’m guilty of putting my best pictures up hoping to bait more readers…but after that, I hope they stick around only if they like my stuff. I like to be kept honest and challenge my content.
Jennifer Goodwin - CEO
http://www.internetGIRLfriday.com
“We are a group of virtual assistants (people working from home offices) that will do your work (administrative, bookkeeping, personal) so you can have your free time back to do whatever you want with it.”
Jennifer “That Virtual Assistant Chick” Goodwins last blog post..internetGIRLfriday.com is Hiring
May 31st, 2008 at 11:33 pm
That’s why I include my girlfriend in my avatar. She’s the good looks and I’m the brains… :)
James Duthies last blog post..Guest post on Huomah/Trail of the Fire Horse
June 1st, 2008 at 3:26 pm
@Mark - Any Stumble it needs to “catch” early, and I imagine it’s the same for your StumbleUpon homepage. I’m not sure of the actual benefits. StumbleUpon I tend to think of as my “fun” social networking. For all that I find a lot of great resource, I equally use it for entertainment.
Definitely agree that the attractiveness of a picture has little to do with how interesting the stumbles are!
@Jennifer - Sure, I’d expect people to choose good pictures relevant to themselves. I think any genuine fandom and interest is always going to be developed from strong stumbles.
@James - I think my wife would kill me if I tried the same. Although to be fair she’s the brains as well as the good looks. :)
June 22nd, 2008 at 6:54 pm
[...] Google searches are bringing traffic to my site. I’d noticed since my post a while ago ‘Only Cute Girls Make Me Stumble‘ that I’d started picking up odd bits and pieces of search for “cute [...]