What is StumbleUpon?

On August 18, 2008, someone referred this blog to StumbleUpon and one of the links was viewed 200 times the same day. I was shocked and could not believe that it’d be true. So I tried to find out what StumpleUpon is. According to Wikipedia – the free encyclopedia:

StumbleUpon is an Internet community that allows its users to discover and rate Web pages, photos, and videos. It is a personalized recommendation system which uses peer and social-networking principles.

Web pages are presented when the user clicks the “Stumble!” button on the browser’s toolbar. StumbleUpon chooses which Web page to display based on the user’s ratings of previous pages, ratings by his/her friends, and by the ratings of users with similar interests. Users can rate, or choose not to rate, any Web page with a thumbs up or thumbs down, and clicking the Stumble button resembles “channel-surfing” the Web. There is also one-click blogging built in as well.

In May 2007, StumbleUpon was acquired by eBay – a web company in which people buy and sell goods and service worldwide.

Update: I’ve just signed up an account with StumbleUpon and my url is http://onlinejourney.stumbleupon.com. So far I am pretty interested in learning it and I am wondering how it can drive more traffic to my site.

Related articles
Beginners Guide to StumbleUpon
Is Stumbleupon traffic worth getting?

How to Implement Google’s Translation on WordPress.com Blog?

While checking the summary statistics in StatCounter about my website, I discovered that many of my visitors are from foreign countries other than United States. I also have seen many blogs/websites embedded Google translation service with icons of their corresponding country flags. So I think it is very important that you can provide this kind of service for your visitors. Although the translation service provided from Google is not perfect, hopefully Google will improve it further in the future. If you are interested and want to implement the codes on your blog just like mine here. Follow the steps below:

• Download the widget codes here. It provides 22 languages with its corresponding flags.
• Login to your WordPress Dashboard; click on Design/Widgets.
• Click on Add next to text; you should see text widget is added to the right sidebar.
• Click on Edit to open up its text area; put the above codes there; give a title if you wish.
• Click on Change to save it.
• Move this text widget wherever you like it to be.
• Finally click on Save Change to save it.

If you use Google Blogger as blog platform, check out these articles: Translate Your Blog/Website in Different Languages – Part 1 and Translate Your Blog/Website in Different Languages – Part 2.
Enjoy!