An Addict's Guide to StumbleUpon

Here's what mine looks like, from left to right:

-The Stumble Button - for stumbling to another site, you can stumble randomly, stumble favorites of another member, stumble by tags, or stumble by a category.

-If a friend has recommended a page to you, then a red envelope icon will appear between the Stumble Button and the Blue Thumb. When you hit Stumble, you'll arrive at pages that friends have sent you and a message from them will appear. You can reply to their message as well.

-Thumbs Up - I like it. Hit this when you're on a page you like. The blue thumb will turn green once it "takes" - it might take a moment. If no one else has ever thumbed the page before, a pop-up screen will appear for you to leave a review and tag the page.

-Thumbs Down - Click this if you don't like the page.

-The Tag - click this to add your own tags to a page. You can tag a page without thumbing it up or down unless it's "undiscovered". A pop-up will appear where you can add up to 5 tags to a page. The blue tag will turn reddish-orange once you've added tags.

-Send to - Click here to pull up a list of your Stumble Upon friends to send the page to. A pop-up will appear where you can add a note to your friend about the page.

-The Talk Bubble - When you thumb up or down a page, if other people have commented on the page you can click this to see what they have to say. You can click the bubble on any page to see reviews and it will also show you up to 35 members who have liked that page. If you LOVE a page, you can click on other members who've liked it as well to visit their blogs and find friends or more cool sites!!

-Channels- On my toolbar, the Earth icon will randomly pull up a page from my prefered topics, the little people one will pull up a random page liked by one of my friends, the pix will show me a random image, the TV, a random video.

-The green, intertwined arrows are cool. Click it to randomly stumble through a selection of partner websites

-The Favorites button will take you directly to your SU blog page, and the Friends button to your friends page.

Tools will give you a drop-down menu to customize your toolbar.

Here's what happens when I click on the talk bubble while on the page. It brings up the SU reviews of the page, you can see who else liked that page and can see that *I* liked it as well (since I'm logged in to SU at the moment, reviews of any page I've done will automatically show up at the top).

To Photoblog a pic to SU, first give the page a thumbs up, then right-click on the pic you want to blog and at the bottom of your toolbar click on "StumbleUpon Photoblog It". That will bring you to the page's SU reviews where you can add a blurb or caption about the pic if you'd like. Hit save and then it will show up at the top of your SU profile page.

Notice that I've used the StubleUpon Photoblog It! function to add an interesting photo from a site which I recently stumbled, I've got an avatar, and a brief bio listed. My "Blog" is the pages I've left a review for, stuff I've photoblogged, or things I've written to be added (just like any other blog). Next to that there's a "Pages Liked" tab that will show you every single page I've given a thumbs up to - whether I've reviewed it or not. Next is "Discovered" which will show you all of the pages which I was the first to add to SU. Then there's Top Picks. I have none. Because I'm lazy.

Here's one of my dearest online pals' profiles. If you visit someone else's profile page or blog, you'll notice some options on the right-hand side.

It tells me that I'm subscribed to her favorites, so anytime she leaves a review, it will appear in my "What's New" list.

There's an option to "Stumble Her Favorite". Clicking that will allow you to Stumble through all of her favorite videos, sites, or images.

I can send her a message, or review her blog (that's just like reviewing any other page).

The button that says "Visit another stumbler" is very handy. Click it to randomly go to another member's page. You can browse through members to find other interesting folks to connect with and just like any other page, you can give them the thumbs up or down or review their blog.

From her page, you can also see that I am friends with her. If I wasn't it would ask if I'd like to send a friend request.

Here's what happens when you click "Send to" on your toolbar. A list of your friends comes down (only the ones you've most recently sent things to). Click on the bottom to "show more friends" and it will bring up a complete, alphabetical list of all your Stumble Upon friends (no avatars on the second list though - bummer).

See that little search box on the upper right corner? Use that to search for tags (keywords). When I enter "Squidoo" into that search box, here's what comes up - a page showing me a list of members who like "Squidoo" pages, the most recently popular pages which have been tagged "Squidoo" and the option to Stumble through pages with that tag. Note - this feature only pulls up pages that have been tagged with the word "Squidoo", not lenses necessarily, but blogs, articles, any type of page that carries the tag.

Your mailbox is different than using the drop-down send to button on your toolbar. Members can also send private messages to one another via the SU mail system - just visit a members profile and click on "send a message" on the right.

To view your own messages, go to your own profile page and click on your inbox tab (right beneath your profile). From your inbox you can read your private messages, see notifications of reviews that members have left for your profile, and click to see your friend requests (members who have asked to be your "friend").