Young Entrepreneur Blog

StumbleUpon has had a whopping 4 million downloads, and to celebrate we have a world exclusive interview with the top 30 users of Stumbleupon.com

Today we are speaking with Stumbleupon top user: BillTVShow

How long have you been an active user of StumbleUpon?

Well my page says member since June 2, 2006. I do recall having another account for a brief period before that, but I lost the pass or something.

What makes you use StumbleUpon more than the other social sites such as Digg, Del.icio.us etc…?

SU is more random and unpredictable and you there’s just a broader base of things you can find as long as you’re liberal in your category selections; in fact, perhaps a majority of the sites that I now revisit daily came from stumbles. Digg is great and I spend a good bit of time there, but that is often to find new discoveries for SU.

If you could make one positive change to the current Stumbleupon platform, what would it be?

The most common complaint I see is eliminating the 200 friend limit thing.

What don’t you like about the current StumbleUpon platform?

I love SU and there’s little I can complain about. It works so quickly and smooth. I would say there is nothing particularly wrong with the current platform, but I do think that they have not yet tapped their full statistical and potential feature capabilities. How cool would it be to see graphs of your stumble trends over time (by topic, etc.)? Expanded stats would be a great addition, even if only for sponsors.

What are the main factors you look for in content that you feel is worth stumbling?

The majority of my discoveries are things I am interested in and, in some cases, so personally specific that very few people would ever stumble it as well. But for most discoveries I am looking for something that I like or somewhat like, but, in large part, I think will be liked by a lot of other people.

Is there anything that puts you off stumbling an article?

Well sure, but that just varies depending on what it is.

What sort of topics interest you the most?

Anything arts (painting, drawing, photography, graphic design, photoshop, fine arts, etc), sports (golf, basketball, etc.), music (especially related to singing), flash games (who can resist?), humorous content (funny pics, webcomics, funny vids) and offbeat things (unique stuff you didn’t expect to come across). In fact that last thing is probably what makes SU really interesting. Or you could just check out my tag cloud on my profile.

What advice would you give to a brand new user of Stumbleupon?

Be very liberal with your topic choices. I have used all the topic slots available and it has made my experience that much more varied and rich. After while, try to give back to the SU community by starting to make your own discoveries.

Do you ever get thanked by the site owners after you stumble their content?

Rarely, but it has happened.

Has anyone ever tried to bribe you into stumbling their content?

Nope.

Do you own a website? And if so, what have been your biggest StumbleUpon successes from your site?

http://www.billtvshow.com

I stumbled a couple of my Absolut Vodka ads (which I made) that I thought people would like and they did quite well. They get about 1000 or so SU visits a month. Other than that, I don’t really stumble my own site content much, though I think there’s some nice stuff on there just ready to get stumbled

This ad did the best:

http://www.billtvshow.com/images/absolut/full/absolut_darkside.jpg

What are your thoughts on stumbling your own content?

I thought it would be cool to do at first, but then it just kind of felt like spamming, so I’ve just held off and hoped for nature to take its course. ;P

What are your thoughts on Linkbait and people creating content with the sole aim of getting traffic from sites like Stumbleupon?

Believe me I see a lot of it. Very often it’s reprocessed stuff and obviously it happens more and more often lately; consider that there is now a word to describe it. I’ll tend to thumbs it if it’s really good content or if it’s well presented, but I’d say I see as much bad as good.

Are you influenced by factors like authority of the website, design of the website etc? And if so, what sort of things do you specifically look for?

I’m really most affected by the content itself and whether it interests me enough to give it a thumbs. Design-wise it doesn’t matter as much unless I’m specifically trying to stumble for really cool site designs.

Why do you feel you are in the top 30 most powerful users of StumbeUpon?

Discoveries. While I still stumble somewhat regularly, my main focus in the last year has been on finding new content that I like and, very importantly, that I think other users will like. You have to take some chances, but it always feels good when you see the thumbs hit 40+ and the reviews go double digits. Then you know you struck gold.

What advice would you give to anyone who wanted to get into the top 30?

Read above. Do that. If that’s not what did it for me, then I don’t know what did it. Oh and tag properly; I always add 5 tags per discovery. Use relevant tags, but also pay attention and see if any seem to work particularly better than others. Also, make friends. I don’t tend to send my discoveries to my friends nearly as much as I should, but a lot of people do and that is how they get their stumbles off the ground.

Thanks for your time, is there anything else you would like to add?

A stumble a day keeps the boredom away.

Grab the Full 14 Interview Box set Now!

Completely FREE to Your Inbox

Click the image below for your FREE interviews