Expand your Horizons and be Heard with StumbleUpon

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May 042012
 

Writers’ stories of getting through to Hollywood are often worthy of a Blockbuster themselves; with so much competition it can be seemingly impossible for hopefuls to get their big break. However, writers and creators are exploring online avenues such as YouTube, StumbleUpon and Twitter to democratize the discovery of creative ideas, and a few have been extremely successful in translating those stories from computer screen to big screen.

Isaac Marion, a writer with a passion for the unexpected, took advantage of the social discovery platform StumbleUpon with his story “I Am a Zombie Filled With Love.” One day in January 2008, talent scout Cori Stern Stumbled Isaac’s story and was instantly captivated. She contacted Isaac and immediately worked on building it into Warm Bodies, a zombie love story-turned-upcoming film starring John Malkovich set to launch in 2013. Isaac’s social strategy had worked.

image thumb22 Expand your Horizons and be Heard with StumbleUponThe purpose of StumbleUpon has always been to surface more hidden gems like Isaac’s short story to the Internet universe at large so that anyone one of us could unearth the next big thing. “If someone’s good, it’ll bubble up to the top,” Stern has said.

The thing is, the newest and most novel ideas are rarely discovered on mainstream websites or through an intentional search. That’s the beauty of StumbleUpon’s recommendation technology, which applies both human eyes and algorithms to select and surface the highest quality content for any given user. The approach goes far beyond what’s popular with the crowd or even with your social network – it puts users like Stern in the driver’s seat of their personal Internet exploration. When you put more than 20 million “cool-hunters,” as Stern likes to refer to StumbleUpon’s members, together discovering and endorsing content according to their own personal preferences, you’ll get high-quality lesser-known content that also has potential for broad appeal.

We now have the ability to push out content over the Web in ways we’ve never been able to before, and to a broader audience. Platforms like StumbleUpon allow writers to reach a limitless audience; you never know who will be like-minded – and maybe even life-changing. After all, if you don’t put your ideas out there, you’ll never have the opportunity to be discovered.

About the Author:

Currin Berdine serves as the Head of Community Management and User Support at StumbleUpon, a site that helps you discover great content from every corner of the web. She enjoys live indie music shows, traveling the world, and biking around San Francisco. You can follow Currin on StumbleUpon at http://stumbleupon.com/stumbler/Currin.

Expand your Horizons and be Heard with StumbleUpon

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  • http://youronline.biz/ Jacko

    This is pretty cool people need to really take social media seriously.  Good article.

    • http://www.dragonblogger.com/ Dragon Blogger

       @Jacko I agree and it is getting easier for people with idea’s and creativity to find others willing to listen, discover and fund them with so many new online tools at their disposal.

  • cmoneyspinner

    I try very hard to get the most I can out StumbleUpon. 
    Links I post that belong to others get views.  My links?  Some of them get views.  Some of them still show ZERO views.  I asked someone else and they said my articles probably had not been indexed.  Only … does it take almost a year to get indexed?  So … bottom line.  I still use StumbleUpon to find stuff.  It’s great for that.  But as far as driving traffic to my stuff?  Truthfully?  Forget about it!!

    • http://www.dragonblogger.com/ Dragon Blogger

       @cmoneyspinner You can’t stumble your own links, this will get you banned and chastised by community, instead join Facebook groups like Stumbles R Us and cooperatively participate, their stumbles will help give you a boost, there are dozens of FB groups for stumbling articles and cross promoting.  

      • cmoneyspinner

         @Dragon Blogger  Thank you nice person.  Straight talk is also a great booster and promoter!

  • http://blogsnewsreviews.com/ AstroGremlin

    I’ve noticed this about StumbleUpon.  If you put up a piece of good, entertaining work, especially with pictures, it can really go viral.  If a recommendation doesn’t “take” it’s just not a hit.  Try and do better next time. I avoided posting my own links for months, but then started doing it with good pieces.  I haven’t been banned yet.  StumbleUpon has a franchise to protect, and it seems to “know” when readers don’t like something.  Good for them!  StumbleUpon rocks, but don’t try to spam it because it won’t work.  I was a Stumbler long before I was a blogger.  Ask yourself this, “Would I give this a thumbs up?”  If not, don’t “discover” it!  

    • cmoneyspinner

       @AstroGremlin – Truthfully I’ve kind of spread myself thin trying so many different social media tools.  But out of all the tools I’ve tried, I haven’t given up on StumbleUpon.  Which is why every opportunity I get to figure out how to harness its power, I jump on it!  I didn’t just start using SU yesterday.  With respect to my own links?  Well … maybe they just ain’t that good and I need to accept that and move on.  :) <3  Happy Monday!