StumbleUpon is a weak link to the Web

I've been trying to beat StumbleUpon into submission these past few days. It is a good aggregator ala Digg, and a bit of a rising star -- I have noticed an influx of traffic here at my blog and some "friend" activity. (By the way, I think every social net defines friend a bit different. StumpleUpon is more serious about the term, as in -- friends you actually know in real life. You can subscribe to someone's feed, or send them a friend request. A feed is essentially the same as adding a friend in Digg.)

My biggest issue with SU is the interface. It's awkward at best, and unusable at worst. Maybe you know the tricks, but for me -- I have not found a way to add a site without using the SU toolbar. (There is a Sumbit link you can use as a manual process, but it's cumbersome.) You click on a thumbs-up sign to say that you like a site, and it is added to your favorites list. Or is it? Your favs may only appear if you select to filter by those you have actually reviewed. In a typical user interface faux pa, when you are on the screen where you type a review, how do you know that you can filter by that option? It's like sending someone off in a canoe and then telling them how the paddle works. I'm not seeing a way to add a site just by clicking a single button at StumbleUpon.com proper, and then to know that all of your selections will be in a simple list.

Web 2.0 companies -- there's a lesson here: if you are going to give people a lot of options, make sure do a lot of hard work on making the interface very easy to use.

I do like the fact that -- when submitting a site -- you have to click an option about whether it is an adult site or not, which is a feature that Digg sorely lacks. Otherwise, the other review and categorization is optional, which is odd.

Now, since the toolbar is the fastest way to add a favorite, it's more disconcerting to find that it only supports Firefox 2, 3.0 and IE (most versions of course but not the IE8 beta). So, not the Firefox 3.1 beta I use currently, not Chrome, not Safari, not Opera. That seems really limiting in an age where people are free to pick any browser they want and the toolbar is the only thing that really works well for making selections.

Of course, SU is mostly a link finder. You add sites to show SU what you like, and then you click a Stumble button to see pages that fit your profile. Okay, but if the link process is convoluted, so will my semi-random stumbling.

SU also seems a little heavy-handed. I know of at least one person who was banned from the site for suggesting too many sites, and if you try to subscribe to or friend too many people in a day, you are temporarily blocked from socializing for that day. I'm not sure, but I think SU won't let me add a favoite that mentions my name (like this blog post). These protections seem egregious, though, when you are just trying to share a lot of good content quickly and Digg is a click away.

I think one of the great things about Digg is that you click a yellow box to add your vote to the site. Favorites appear in a quick list as well, but not by any effort on your part -- it all seems fluid and easy. Maybe SU purposefully makes the favorites process difficult to discourage link scammers.

SU is also just confusing in general. The default layout -- with large thumbnails showing your favorites (I know you can just show a list) doesn't use screen real estate well. There are links for managing interests and sharing favorites -- things that are just quick clicks in Digg. It's very hard to figure out what the most popular stories are by a simple count. I do like that it seems to be easier to see who the active users are by seeing one "top stumblers" page. (Digg sort of hides this from the average user.)

And then there is this: do we need more than one social link aggregator? I mean, isn't Digg enough? StumbleUpon is more visual, more protected -- but essentially the same with a worse interface and not as much traffic.

John Brandon is a regular contributor to Computerworld, a print journalist, music reviewer, and book author.