Using StumbleUpon for More than A Quick Break

I’ve been using StumbleUpon for a while now and thought of it only really for two things:

1. A fun way to take a quick 5-minute break and laugh, learn something or give a thumbs down to a clumsy marketing effort; and

2. An interesting way to drive traffic to our site.

Now, thanks to a great post by Caroline Middlebrook, I realize that StumbleUpon is much more than that. You can use SU to connect with like-minded people if you just spend a little more attention to the StumbleUpon toolbar than I’ve been doing so far.

StumbleUpon Toolbar

Here’s Caroline’s process, in a nutshell:

1. StumbleUpon a particular channel that interests you, or Stumble by keywords;

2. Pay attention to who submitted the Stumble’s that are of interest to you and check out their profile.

3. Look at their tag clouds to see how interested they are in the topic you’ve found.

4. Connect with those who are most interesting, keeping in mind SU’s 200-friend limit.

My StumbleUpon Tag Cloud

The above is my SU tag cloud. Apparently I like bizarre, and advertising and marketing and internet tools. Interesting.

There’s lots in Caroline’s post, even if you don’t want to build a big SU friends network. For one, Stumbling by keyword or channel is a great idea when you’re looking for that next blog post.

Have you used StumbleUpon in any unique ways like this?