
StumbleUpon closing after 16 years, accounts can be migrated to Mix - john58
https://medium.com/@gc/su-is-moving-to-mix-c2c3bff037a5
======
dmschulman
StumbleUpon was one of the first web services I came across that actually
provided a new and exciting way to traverse the internet. I'll never forget
the sense of discovery and wonder and amusement it provided, my only other
sources for cool and interesting content were things my friends would share
with me or sites I would find via an article/web page.

StumbleUpon took me out of my "filter bubble" if you will and introduced me to
corners of the web I would have possibly never discovered on my own. It will
be missed.

~~~
dom96
Same. It's a real shame they are shutting it down. To be fair, I haven't used
it in a long time.

I'm now wondering how do I rescue my data from StumbleUpon, I don't see any
way to download it. I looked through the settings and my profile page. I even
tried this new mix.com website and it didn't transfer any of my data from
StumbleUpon. Anyone know whether I can export my data somehow?

~~~
gusanmaz
You could also check a tool I wrote that extracts page likes data as JSON file
on
[https://github.com/gusanmaz/StumbleUponRescuer](https://github.com/gusanmaz/StumbleUponRescuer)

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simonbarker87
So SU tangentially provided me with the singularly most embarrassing moment of
my life about 9 years ago.

So we are showing our office to a design company a few buildings over and just
chatting about the business and the stuff we make (we were all starting out
and in our early 20s), there were lots of prototype bits around and adhesives
and stuff, basically the office had a slight chemical smell to it.

One of the guys from the design agency says “That smell, reminds me of
_inaudible half mumble_ , in my spare time I like to surf”. My dumb dumb brain
decides he means he likes to surf the web and so I reply with “oh, you should
check out Stumble Upon, it’s a pretty cool service for finding new stuff on
the web”.

Everyone looks at me like I’m a total idiot but I just carried on as normal
because my brain is still thinking: surfing the web and not the much more
obvious surfing with wet suits that smell like our office does. I’m guessing
the bit I didn’t hear was the word wetsuits.

Anyway, as soon as we show them out it dawns on me what a socially awkward
penguin I just managed to be, I still die a little inside every time I
remember the bemused look on his face after my comment. Funnily enough we
never did do any work with those guys.

Anyway, thanks Stumble Upon!

~~~
openfuture
You should drop what you are doing and go find a way to embarrass yourself
properly. I mean no offense but it's just so sad that you've managed to avoid
embarrassment to this extent when there is so much to learn from it.

~~~
simonbarker87
No offence taken, I'll take mine over some of the other stories out there.
I've got plenty of time to drum something else up, I'll try not to
specifically plan anything though.

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majani
I've been mulling a form of charity where instead of closing down a once
famous website, you give it to some talented developers in a poorer country to
maintain it remotely. There are good developers in third world countries who
get paid a pittance for basically busy work. They would certainly appreciate
the challenge and money around a service like StumbleUpon. What do you think
of this idea and is there anyone doing something like this?

~~~
whack
"Once famous" websites are rarely ever thrown away completely. They are often
scrapped for parts, and any nugget of value that still remains, is sold to the
highest bidder. This is often incompatible with letting the service continue
running as usual.

For example, the article mentions that the StumbleUpon cofounder is currently
working on Mix, and all StumbleUpon accounts will be migrated over to Mix.
Most likely, they want to harvest whatever is remaining of StumbleUpon's
userbase/reputation, to help grow Mix instead. This will be much harder to do,
if StumbleUpon continues operating and slowly degrading.

~~~
excitom
Example: The zombie-esque [http://www.excite.com/](http://www.excite.com/)

~~~
djsumdog
Holy fuck how is this still around?!

edit: never mind. Most of the links are dead and half of it doesn't work.
Kinda makes me think of this old Jurassic Park website that's still alive:

[http://www.lost-world.com/Lost_World02/hammondsoffice.html](http://www.lost-
world.com/Lost_World02/hammondsoffice.html)

------
majos
I started using StumbleUpon in high school, maybe around 2007. Until then my
internet activity was pretty limited to Wikipedia and (oddly enough) Slate.
StumbleUpon cracked that open -- the number of cool, strange websites I'd
never have otherwise found was astonishing, like what I imagine the
prototypical country bumpkin feels when they step off the bus in the big city.

Of course, I haven't used it in at least 5 years, so this news isn't so
surprising. But it was a cool thing for a while.

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RpFLCL
I loved stumble upon until the pages I was shown veered from my interests and
began to feel like either spam or obvious paid content. It was annoying and
the issue that eventually pushed me off after 3-4 years of use.

I'm a bit sad to see this news. Maybe my view became jaded, but with this
timing I have to wonder if it's related to GDPR. A profile of your interests
and favorite sites is the kind of information a company like CA would have
been interested in buying.

~~~
gitgud
I felt the same, it lost its charm. It seemed like there were many paid
articles coming up and I didn't feel the categories worked all that well.

Ultimately it seems reddit did a better job at categorising links for peoples
interests with a transparent voting system...

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dswalter
There is no mention of this in the document, but the timing suggests there may
be a GPDR-related factor. It's hard to get consent from users that haven't
touched the service for years.

~~~
darkerside
That's an interesting point. I wonder if at some point in the future we'll
start getting historical exemptions, similar to those for real world
properties with historical value.

It might even free up faster innovation in technical law, since new laws could
be as onerous (or not) as lawmakers wish.

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duncancarroll
I used to have a setup where StumbleUpon was permanently on my TV set, and the
Stumble button itself I had hooked up to my remote control, so I could stumble
my way through things on the couch. It was infinitely better than TV itself.

I agree with other commenters how it expanded their online world, and I'm
saddened that there is no real alternative to this now, especially in the land
of insular internet bubbles we live in today.

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upbeatlinux
StumbleUpon was "unique" in the aughties sense of the word. Before Reddit and
Digg made things Hot or Not this was the place to go for interesting content.
It wasn't loud or or overly verbose; it sent you to great sites before SEO and
paid media killed content.

Maybe I'm just waxing nostalgic on the implementation as well as the time.
IDK.

I hope Garret, Ali and the team at Mix do great things.

~~~
djsumdog
I personally miss What's Better (two random photos and you click in which one
is better, like a Seal vs a Bird, or AIDS vs Jazz Music, or Europe vs Ben
Folds Five).

It didn't last long and it was written entirely in Python .. had some scaling
issues too.

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bhouston
Stumble upon was one of my first contracting jobs. In second year university
back in 1999/2000 (more than 16 years ago?) I had a little freelance project
for them to write an Amazon like recommender system. Super small project money
wise and I just ended up delivering a math paper like result. I suspect they
never used it and instead just contracted with someone else.

~~~
SirRhosis
2000 seems so long ago, but then I realize I was a "mere" 23 y/o at that time.
Now that makes me feel old.

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wkirby
StumbleUpon was a game changer, and a big gateway into discovering truly weird
and wonderful things about the internet. I used to bind the Firefox plugin to
middle mouse click, so I could keep browsing with a hotkey.

Haven't used it in years, but still sad to see it go.

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vxNsr
By far the most important service of my younger years that influenced me and
attracted me to CS. Without it I never would’ve discovered all the cool tools
that eventually convinced me to try building my own.

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josefresco
StumbleUpon was a key driver in traffic to some of my early blog posts. They
didn't stay long (compared to search referrals) however the exposure was
great.

~~~
SirRhosis
IIRC, there was no "social" part of the media. It was just random links to
other sites. Most of which also had zero social media factor. SU was just
curiosity.

~~~
josefresco
The "social" part was that the inventory of links/websites was provided, and
voted upon by users.

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desireco42
I was working on Website Randomizer at the time when everyone told me it is
already done and pointed to StumbleUpon. I abandoned project, which I am a
little bit sorry about, but I always liked StumbleUpon and it was great way to
discover new things.

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alexfringes
If one wanted to build a barebones SU replacement, what would be a good
approach to get an index of random pages these days? (Or is there an
underreported replacement out there somewhere?)

~~~
sdsdsdsdsdsds
Comman crawl may be good place to start

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tortasaur
I remember using StumbleUpon in my teens, and one site in particular sticks
out to me. It was a full-page Flash point-and-click game where you directed a
few children across a few different landscapes (IIRC at least a desert and
jungle).

It stuck out to me because it was an example of someone making something to be
enjoyed, in a time where I had assumed people needed money as a motivator for
entertainment to be created.

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jcousins
I have many fond memories of Stumbling back in the day, made some genuine
connections with a few Stumblers, more so than I ever did with Friendster etc.

The only other social media service that resulted in similar genuine
connections with other like-minded folks was MySpace music. I've not found
that x-factor - serendipity, I suppose, with a platform since.

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murph-almighty
Honest question to commenters here, since this seems to be a common trend: Why
did you stop using StumbleUpon?

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mandliya
Computer science blog gems I found using stumbleupon were priceless when I was
in college. I would spend google portion of night stumbling good blogs of
computer science and DIY projects. I could never find them through google
because I didn’t know what to look for.

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NicoJuicy
Lol, I used it this week after 5 years. Articles were pretty old and outdated,
but the UI hasn't lost its touch, just no real/meaningful community

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godzillabrennus
I fondly remember this platform from my college days. At the time I had a
girlfriend who was kind of a missmatch for my interests. She was much more
focused on athletic pursuits than exploring new types of technology. That all
changed when I showed her the StumbleUpon toolbar and site. After a few clicks
she realized that it was a lot of fun exploring the Internet randomly.

Thanks for the great memories guys!

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heywire
I'm sad that I had forgotten about StumbleUpon, and now it will be gone. I
found so many small interesting sites that way.

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jcoffland
I've been meaning to check out this StumbleUpon thing everyone's talking
about. Guess I'm too late.

~~~
SirRhosis
I hear ya. This sliced bread phenomenon seems amazing. I really should look
into it.

------
dang
Url changed from [https://www.neowin.net/news/stumbleupon-closing-
after-16-yea...](https://www.neowin.net/news/stumbleupon-closing-
after-16-years-accounts-can-be-migrated-to-mix), which points to this.

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sizzzzlerz
A valuable and worthwhile tool in its day. I was a fan from almost its
beginning, using it for some years but, gradually, I stopped entirely. I
haven't even thought about for a decade now. Still a pleasant memory however
of something so simple but very useful.

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exikyut
Apparently no data is being lost:

> _With a few clicks you can register and import your SU favorites, interests
> and tags — creating Mix Collections that are easily shared with friends. If
> you have any questions, email support@mix.com for help._

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whoaminow
Shame, have fond memories of finding cool random things in the early days on
StumbleUpon. Later on it felt like an adfeed but still, good stuff.

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gymshoes
People who have tried using Mix, how's your experience been so far?

If you haven't added any friends, is the filter bubble prevented?

~~~
murjinsee
I can only view like 4 lists of 13 articles each right now. The website
directs you to download an app, which seems to be nothing more than a shortcut
to a webpage. When i open the app, there is a banner at the bottom that says,
"Get it on Google play".

All in all, Mix seems to be a work in process to me, and not a smooth landing
off Stumble

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dandare
StumbleUpon was first, why Reddit won? Can you tell me examples of what good
decisions Reddit founders made?

~~~
ttul
Reddit started out with a nerdy community that bootstrapped excellent content.
They added features slowly, focusing on quality and the moderation system. The
idea of sub-Reddits allowed groups to form, each with its own “rules” to
ensure the site remained useful to everyone as it grew.

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c12
But stumble upon's logo is so much better than mix's...

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kstrauser
I'm simultaneously sad, and eager to hear Maciej's reaction.

