Stumbling

I think it’s safe to say I would fall soundly under the umbrella of marketing whore.  No arguments?  Didn’t think so.

In an effort to get some more traffic to what is clearly YOUR favorite blog on the entire internet, I’ve been dedicating a few hours a day to researching other promotion vehicles.  The tool of the day is StumbleUpon.

It’s actually fairly nifty.  Basically you download this toolbar that attaches to your browser.  Then you click off the topics that interest you.  Once you’ve set up your preferences, you’re whizzing along the information highway and only stopping at the destinations that interest you.  You can then “like” or “not like” the page they serve you.  With the toolbar installed, you can also randomly “like” other sites you visit and add them to the StumbleUpon database.

And that’s when I decided to solicit Rocco’s help.  It seems they have security measures in place so marketing whores like myself can’t just join, “like” the hell out of their own site, then disappear into the ether.  My spouse on the other hand…

I described the service to Rocco, who of course reacted initially with skepticism and a long diatribe about Big Brother and identity theft.  Plied with freshly brewed coffee and a demonstration, he started to come around.  We then downloaded the application, installed it, and started to set it up on his laptop.

Once he clicked off his interests, he hit the “Stumble!” button on the tool bar.  The first site was not very exciting – a collection of photos from that street artist that works in chalk.  Then he hit a fun drawing tool that ZeFrank made (oh how I love ZeFrank – I could play with this all damn day).  Next was an article about strange things you can compost.  Rocco was completely hooked.

“So I just wait till I StumbleUpon your site and then ‘like’ it?” Rocco asked?

“No, you can add any new article or post you find anywhere online.  If you find something you like, you just click the “like” button regardless of what site it’s on or how you came to that site.”

“Um….”

“So go to a post you like.”  I waited as he inevitably picked Car Talk Part II.  He likes the posts where he looks witty.

“Oh!  So then I just click this ‘like’ button?”

“Yup!  Then it prompts you to enter some security text so it knows you’re a real person.”

I paused as Rocco typed in the squishy words.

“Then it asks you to verify its appropriate for work…you know…clarify that it isn’t a porn site.”

“Wait, is that an option?”

“What do you mean?”

“I can StumbleUpon porn?”

“Probably.  I bet there’s some setting somewhere.”

Now as I type this he’s calling out different preference tabs and asking which one might hold the magical key to free online porn.  Somehow this isn’t going exactly as I’d planned.