Is the future of search and social media merging?

Let me start with a definition by comparison. StumbleUpon is not purely a Social Media wonder as much as Facebook is; it is also a search engine as much as Google is. The idea is to use community to determine what good content is. Like Google`s Pagerank algorithm, StumbleUpon promotes content that its users deem are worthy of promotion. In the case of PageRank, websites and blogs generally link to good content (but not always, since not everyone who likes something will put a link on his or her website). Between Google and SU, each cannot deliver information in the same fashion as each other. So they each are the best and most cultivated, engineered and evolved search engines in their respective field, or niche.

So why the need for this definition? The WebProNews video interview with the Co-founder of StumbleUpon, Garret Camp, revealed that personal auctioneer giant, Ebay, bought the company last year. The motivation behind purchasing such a successful business is obvious: it makes money, although there definitely appears to be more to the picture. Ebay has allegedly left the development of SU in the trajectory it already occupies. The future is completely open, considering Ebay could decide tomorrow that they want to bastardise SU into their own personal search engine for their auction stock. That would no doubt drive traffic and sales across their platform, as the hype and fuss around a new gimmick would ensue. So what does the internet`s number one auctioneer have in store for the internet’s number one alternative search engine? Who knows? The directors and creative engineering teams of course!

So, away from “la filosofía extenso” (not a standard expression, I made it up) of the future, and back to the real, more solid world of fact, a copious mass of which can be found in this mathematics for stumblers post (much more in depth and based on real research than this one).

With its audience score, SU has snuck a little of Google`s algorithmic measurement of things into its own makeup. It seems to make political sense, using the natural democracy of the nature of people and their power of opinion and decision to create balance within a universe of content. So they have based their algo of content rating on various factors, including the “thumb up/down” value from stumblers, who in turn are affected by the number of fans they have (a fan is someone who hasn`t befriended you back). Like Google, only seemingly more astutely, they are covering up their tracks and not telling you how or why your content is performing or not. Your score as a stumbler will determine the effect your opinions have on content that passes through your browser. If you have a prominent standing in the SU universe, your opinion will make more of a difference. This is more a function pioneered by social media frontiersman Digg than a search engine ranking. So the above-mentioned poster and self-proclaimed SU expert, Tim Nash has claimed that the first stumbler of a piece of content will have an enormous effect on that content, they will pretty much start it on a spiraling storm of “server-crashing” visitor influx induced chaos, or will cause it to fritter and dissipate like a bewildered moth fluttering into a ballet of flames.

Yes, it is reported that, with luck, and compelling content, SU can send visitors in the tens of thousands to your domain. So from a marketer`s perspective, the integral and esoteric understanding of the SU algorithm is essential to future success in generating traffic to a business. You cannot become completely dependent on one source for traffic, and Google will increasingly develop ways to distinguish commercial information from academic (aside from anchor text). As Garret Camp kindly suggested, StumbleUpon is not as much an owner of an exclusive functionality, but just a pioneer of a methodology that will be more widely employed by others in future.