Mediaboss Marketing

We all know about the king of social networking: Facebook with its billion plus users. Then there is Twitter, Linkedin, Google+ and the major Chinese social networks like Renren and Sina Weibo. Then there is are the outsider social networks, the medium sized ones but have strong brand recognition thats where StumbleUpon plays.

Most people wont be able to explain what a discovery engine is, but you might find that some of those people are part of StumbleUpons 25-million users. Though the platform works a little like a search engine, its algorithm is just a bit different.

StumbleUpon finds and recommends content that is personalised to its users based on their tastes and interests using peer-sourcing and social-networking principles. Started in 2001 as a way to create a virtual community for people online, things have changed quite a bit for the company. In August 2011, StumbleUpon announced that it had reached the 25-billion stumble mark, at which point it said that more than one-billion stumbles were being added per month.

It hasnt always been smooth sailing at the company though. It was bought by eBay in 2007, then bought back by its founders in 2009. Last year founding CEO Garrett Camp stepped down leaving the company CFO Mark Bartels to take his place as CEO. Earlier this year, the company laid off 30% of its staff from 110 to 75 employees.

But it seems things are starting to get mainstream for the discovery engine platform. According to the Hollywood Reporter, film studios are beginning to use the platform to promote their content.

Studios using StumbleUpon to market and distribute their content is a relatively recent phenomenon, StumbleUpon product VP Cody Simms told the Hollywood Reporter.

On a recent trip to Silicon Valley, we chatted to the new CEO to get a better idea of where the discovery engine is today and what plans are in place for its future. Bartels believes that personalised discovery is an interesting challenge as evidenced by the number of resources that are currently being put toward it.

Mobile is a crucial playing field for the company and, according to Bartels, smartphones have been great for the company. Mobile stumbles, he says make up 35% of all stumbles on the platform.

Memeburn: Weve seen discovery play an increasingly important part in social networking and search. Do you feel that Stumbleupon was ahead of the curve?

Mark Bartels: Personalised discovery is a very interesting challenge and more and more companies are now dedicating a large amount of resources to it. At StumbleUpon weve always been committed to serving you the right content at the right time on the right device. Discovery is a precursor to Search. Search recommendations are based on specific user requests, while Discovery recommendations are based on the users tastes and interests without a specific request. In other words we recommend the most appropriate content to you before you asked for it. Thats an interesting challenge

Originally posted here:
Personalisation and social discovery, Q&A with StumbleUpon CEO