Google Invades StumbleUpon Territory
I feel like all I’ve been writing about is StumbleUpon recently. I promise that I’m almost done, but things just keep popping up that are nothing short of “WOW.”
Take, for example, Google’s new toolbar button. You click on it, and it takes you to a site that your search history would suggest that you like. Hmm… does that sound at all like StumbleUpon, where you click on a thumbs up or thumbs down, and it takes you to a site that your voting history suggests you would like?
However, an initial use of this tool suggests that it still has a long way to go before the quality of the sites is anywhere near that of StumbleUpon. My initial 20 site spree took me to sites which I recognized why I was visiting (text-link-ads, local newspapers, a few mmorpg sites as I’ve recently picked up Guild Wars). However, none of these sites were actually interesting to me, and it fails as a discovery service.
The question is, could it work in the future? With Google’s toolbar power and reach, it stands a chance. It all depends if the content delivery is as exciting as that of StumbleUpon.
