Analysis: StumbleUpon’s Top 50 Stumblers
Glen Allsopp / 
136 Comments / 
August 29th, 2007 / 
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StumbleUpon have a freely available list of their top users, the list shows the 50 users they deem to the ones best following their statement on how to become a ‘top stumbler’:
To become a Top Stumbler, simply use the toolbar on a frequent basis, clicking I-like-it at any page other members would like to stumble upon.
I don’t think theres any information out there on the web similar to what I’m about to show you. If there is then I have wasted over 4 hours for nothing, and if there isn’t then I hope I’ve put this in a format that is easy to digest and informative, let’s begin!
How the Sample was Taken
All information I am about to give to you was taken from the profile pages of the top 50 SU users, written down with a pen and paper (photos at the end) and drawn together to give the following results.
You can find the list of the top Stumblers here.
Stats Time
Sex
I had expected the results of this to be pretty even as I didn’t realise there was such a difference between the two when counting it all up. There was in-fact one person who didn’t declare their gender so I added the number to the side of the women although this doesn’t really change anything. The fact is more men are top users than women.
Age Range
- Oldest: 80
- Youngest: 16
- Average: 34
The average age of the top 50 stumblers is 34, I find this quite surprising and expected it to be a little lower. I can’t of course proove whether people enter their real age when using the site but judging by profile pictures I believe so. I am also unaware of whether there is a top user who is 80 years old but can verify there is a member who is elderly and this is visible from their profile picture aswell.
Membership Length
- Longest: 45 months
- Shortest: 2 months
- Average: 18 months
I was very surprised that one member had managed to become a top stumbler and joined the site in June of 2007. There was someone who had been a member for 4 months and another who had been a member for 5 months. This shows that it does not take a huge amount of time to be considered a top user as long as you get involved in the community. These really are exceptions though, as shown by the fact that the average length a top user has been a member of the site is 18 months (1 and a half years).
Pages Liked
- Highest: 130,434
- Lowest: 501
- Average: 12,805
It is clear from the graph that one member (who in fact has been a member around 2 years) has been able to vote a page as ‘liked’ 130,000 times. The lowest top user on SU voted 501 pages as liked but the average is set at 12,000. The only reason the average is this high is because of the highest result pushing it up, taking this out of the equation would make the average number of pages liked for the top users at around 10,000.
Videos Liked
- Highest: 3254
- Lowest: 7
- Average: 513
As you can see, the number of pages liked by these top users is a lot more than the number of videos that they liked. This was expected for a number of reasons, firstly the function of rating videos was added much later and secondly there’s a lot more text content on the web and it is easier to quickly skim over. It’s interesting to note that the average of pages goes down from 12,000 to 500 when looking at video.
Photos Liked
- Highest: 15,595
- Lowest: 1
- Average: 1086
Interestingly there were two top users who had only ever stumbled 1 photo as something they like. As with both pages and videos there is a spike between the highest number liked and the 2nd highest liked which brings the average up overall. It might be useful to know that these spikes were all from different people which shows varied interest in the content type.
Overall Likes
- Pages: 590,618
- Photos: 54,322
- Videos: 25,693
These are the total number of ‘liked stumbles’ from the top 50 StumbleUpon users. As you can see pages are by far the most popular with photos 2nd and videos being the least popular. By no means does it mean that you can’t get some big traffic to photos or videos though.
Wrap Up
If I’m honest a lot of this was for my own knowledge, I wanted to know a little more about the demographics of the SU top users, for a reason that I can’t explain why. I wanted to see how quickly you could become a top user and how active you had to be to become one. I think I’ve learnt some pretty good estimates of the activity from the top users of the site and decided to share all my information with you guys.
I did say at the start I would post some screenshots of my notepad, this whole thing took me hours and it was all calculated manually:
…and if you found this useful; feel free to give it a stumble!
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Good work friend. You must have really worked hard to find this. I always used to wonder what the Stumblers use to give more thumbs up. So they rate pages more, then photos and at last video. Good. Wish you good luck to be one in top 50 stumblers list.
Thanks for the kind words, glad you liked it
Excellent work Glen, after watching and participating in a lot of the social and business networks for the past 5 years, its refreshing to read after all the dull bullshit I have come across, thanks for the insight, been a member of stumble for a while now and I really like the site. Its one of the only sites that I dont get harassed by others, and the ones who have sent messages have been very respectful, so that would probably relfect the average age, the site has allowed me access to things I would never have fallen across in a million years,
once again thanks again
Kerry
Hey VC, interesting analysis. I’m actually one of the top 5 stumblers (AnitaBath on StumbleUpon), and have been #1 on occassion, so thought I’d give my 2 cents
What I think your analysis fails to provide is HOW you become a top stumbler. You gave 2 hints (possibly without knowing it). In the end though, it doesn’t really do much for someone. It’s a status symbol, a way for SU to tell people who contribute a ton “Thanks for helping to make SU great”.
I’ll answer a few more comments below as well …
Simply because the analysis wasn’t looking into that. I have an interview with a top user being posted on the site shortly.
Sooooo Anita. How does one become a top stumbler? You seem to have done it rather quickly. I have never been to the site but now you have me curious.
Hi Glenn,
Great work. Could you add fan numbers stat?
Sadly i didnt check the fans stats, this is because they are so different per person theres not really much to learn in my opinion.
Thanks for the comment and this is something i might think about adding in the future
Most top stumblers have over 200 fans. But I think there’s currently only a few that have over 1000 (I have 1500+, Klassy has around 2000). It would probably be difficult to become a top stumbler with very few (e.g.
I’m not so sure, I guess we can agree to differ
Glen, amazing post, really nice !! I love SU
Yeah I really like it, I need to give the paid version a shot
Great info! The really interesting thing would be how much more traffic a vote from a top stumbler sends compared to a small time stumbler.
Matt I’m guessing that would be impossible to tell. Firstly because it depends on the story and depends on how many of their friends like it
The answer - none. Initially, page views are determined by the # of friends someone has. But even then, having hundreds or thousands of friends doesn’t guarantee tons of views. For example, if I thumb up some junk spam page, it won’t get more than 5-10 views (because SU would see that my friends thumbed it down and would stop serving it).
That isn’t to say that pages thumbed up by people with lots of friends get more traffic though … it only means those pages get more chances for lots of traffic.
Great answer Anita, thanks for sharing it
Any chance you could give more info on how the two month stumble made it into the top ranks?
(btw, you have two “subscribe to comment” checkboxes above and below the comment box)
I have an interview with a guy who is a ‘top 3′ stumbler in my opinion and made it in 4 months
Huh? I’m one of the top 3, and the two others have been there for about a year …
then of course my opinion is different to yours. They are top 3 at SOMETHING which will be revealed in the interview. Don’t be offended Anita
Excellent post and gives a bit of incite into the top stumblers. If one you only “liked” 500 pages, how is he in the top 50?
I personally dislike SU traffic since they are rarely very targeted and don’t convert.
Also, you should do the median instead of mean when you have such a large range.
I guess it means that a lot of people liked what they were submitting
haha you always put a lot of effort into your posts. You deserve my thumbs up
keep up the good work Glen!!!
If a post is worth doing; it’s worth doing right
a very good resource, I thoroughly enjoyed it
Glad you liked it Ash, thanks for stopping by
What You Can Learn From The StumbleUpon Top 50…
Any socially driven site is only as good as its top users. In line with the Pareto principle, most of the content that is moderated and is successful (or unsuccessful) on social sites is the result of a select few users. With that in mind, let’s take …
Cheers for the link ;), commented on the post
I agree with you. I don’t think there is anything like this ot there.
There is now! Good work.
I hope not ;), prefer to write things that are unique rather than re-hash something that is already out there. I did a little look around before posting but you can never be too sure
I am glad I ’stumbled’ upon this post…..awesome job Glenn!
You’re Spinning bro!
Why thank you Mike, will be interesting to see how much Stumble traffic this actually gets
Excellent write up. Thanks for sharing this SU information :).
I’m also surprised by the average age of Stumble Upon users. I would have assumed low to high twenties as the overwhelming majority. I’ve been proven wrong!
I recently received an email from a top user who noticed this and they said they lied about being 80, I will update the post
Agreeed
Well this is a bit odd, I came to this post earlier from Pronet and now I just found you on stumbleupon.
Great list!
Shows it must be working :P, thanks mate
Glen, this is really good stuff. I cannot wait to read your interview with the top 3 stumbler to see how he made it so quickly
David
I have it all taken down, just need it formatted and posted. It’s certainly interesting
Great post Glenn. I thought I was doing ok as a Stumbler, but next to these guys I am nothing.
Yep, definitely got to get a bit more active if I want to be a top stumbler. I’m certainly active but I will never get time for a huge level of activitiy
stumbled your post, interesting read. I never thumb videos and have my prefs set not to show them, which does not work very well.
My reason for this- slow connection speed and a 1gb monthly download limit
I too now have my preferences not to show videos.
Good info. My theory about the photographs is that there is a large number of them out there, and while they held some interest in my early SU period, I have become really critical. If they are not outstanding, I ignore them. Same with videos, I think.
Interesting Bill; thanks for sharing your insight. I’m always curious about people’s reasoning for things.
Glen, well done on another great post. I always like this data mining stuff myself !
*stumbled*
Thanks Becky, glad you liked it
Nice calculations and work on the post.
But I don’t really see the advantage of being an Top StumbleUpon user actually. What the use of having 130,434 pages liked?
I think users who are top stumblers have a bit more weight given to the stories they submit and are likely to be seen by more people. Of course it depends on whether other users like it aswell, but that is just my thoughts on it.
As stated earlier, not true. It used to be that top stumblers could message with anyone who didn’t explicity block them (even if they selected no messaging), but it even looks like this has been removed.
Hi Anita, I’m not sure how messaging is relevant to the statement you are trying to make?
My point is that as of a year ago, the only benefit of being a top stumbler was that you could message anyone you wanted, unless they got tired of you and explicitly blocked you. A regular SU user could only message about half of all stumblers … the other half disabled messaging.
My point is that being a top stumbler confers no added benefits, but that you used to have messaging benefits if you were the type of stumbler who messaged tons of people.
ah ok Anita, very interesting. Thanks for sharing
Great Job my friend!, I will stumble your page!, visit my site, maybe you find something useful, you are invited!
Thanks, and thanks for the stumble
[...] Analysis: StumbleUpon?s Top 50 Stumblers - an analysis of a sample of stumblers on stumbleupon [...]
Great job Glen !! Very interesting !
Cheers bonnie
Regarding the female vs male gender on stumble!
I believe, as a woman, we have less time to play around then men!!!!!!
What say you women???
B
haha Brenda, maybe that is true
That was not to say I don’t Stumble as I do!! I LOVE IT! After I have been researching genealogy on the net I like to relax but just clicking the icon and seeing where it takes me. If I don’t like or dislike a page I just pass it by as I don’t want to detract from a site that may be ok but not may taste.
I send Stumble emails out ALL the time!! Daily! alot.
But.. women do tend to be bz with work/careers / kids / family / errands etc..!
It is interesting to see were the basic structure lies though. Brenda
A way to become a top stumbler is to repeatedly stumble sites that are always going to getlots of positive votes - say being the first to Stumble each new XKCD cartoon the moment it comes out, and if it’s already been stumbled on it’s main page, stumble it from the category or even image URL, just so you can be the discoverer.
Obviously that’s not the point of Stumble to repeatedly ‘discover’ the same site over & over again, but as each ‘discovery’ will garner hundreds if not thousands of thumbs up, your profile will rise accordingly.
Thats what I have been finding Chris, thats how some people can be a to pstumbler when they have only liked 501 pages. A majority of them will have been liked by others aswell
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[...] Glen Allsopp has done some great analysis on StumbleUpon’s Top 50 Stumblers. [...]
Glen, Thank you so much for doing these charts. I have thought for several months that I had reviewed more sites than anyone else in the world. Turns out I was right. I have 133,530 sites flagged, and am stumbling every spare minute. I want to thank everyone for their help and reviews.
Thanx, Ben
Wow Ben, thanks for stopping by, it’s a pleasure to have you here!
I’m just curious, how many sites would you say you give a review. I’m guessing not many due to the high number of pages you have flagged, yet in your comment you say reviews?
Cheers,
Glen
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Thanx for the information, it was very helpful indeed!!!
Your welcome Raj, glad you found it helpful!
I do think that being on the Top Stumblers list has added benefits, especially if you’ve a website/blog. I think having more friends/fans does matter. When I started out on SU, I could hardly influence any traffic to anywhere. However, now I have about 19 mutual fans/friends. Once I just SUed my Tagged (a social networking site) page and within 2 days it showed about 50 extra pageviews. Of course since no one voted up, it didn’t continue, but still I think the more fans you have and the more sites you have rated affects how you can influence the influx of traffic to a particular website.
[...] Top 50 Stumblers Glen Allsopp over at ViperChill (cool logo by the way) has a great look at the Top 50 Stumblers of StumbleUpon and what it takes to get there. A must read if you ever wondered what it would take be in the top [...]
Good job on the post buddy. StumbleUpon is my favorite. Great crowd who actually read your article. I’d imagine that most of the top stumblers get tons of requests to stumble other sites. Congrats on getting mentioned by Darren too.
Cheers Baron, yeah and I didn’t even have to email him!
Thanks for stopping by mate
Good report.
I liked the beginning but then you started using bar graphs with only one set of numbers, so the age one looks like most stumblers are 80 years old. If you are going to include graphs give them purpose, graphing a single set of numbers is pointless.
We have a very savvy audience here so I’m sure they would have understood it. I would have included the bottom numbers but they cluttered up the graphs a bit and I added the text information below just to make things lear.
Thanks for stopping by
I found your analysis useful in better understanding Stumble Upon. I am also surprised at the average age of top stumblers and the speed at which some of them achieve that status.
Glad you liked it Gene, thanks for stopping by
nice work i dont no why you would have gone into all that research but interesting it was.
For the exact reason that it’s interesting, and it gives people information they wouldnt have had before unless they could program or had a few hours spare like myself
great analysis - it was nice to hear the remarks of one of the top su users so we could find out what it takes to become one.
Exactly Matt, I’m glad a few of them stopped by
[...] Analysis: StumbleUpon’s Top 50 Stumblers and Interview with a Top StumbleUpon User from ViperChill [...]
very good and very resourceful…
One of my favourites so far
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Very nice charts. Thank you for putting all the effort into it. I have to wonder though, what are the full requirements to become a top stumbler? I’ve been on SU for over a year, have stumbled over 12000 sites and over 300 fans, but have yet to have my name on that top 50… and yes, it’s just a status thing, but I’m totally into the status stuff : )
Guess I’ll keep stumbling and stumbling some more… some day I’ll make that page
Thanks again Mr. Allsopp!
Your welcome, you have stumbled a lot but how many have you submitted?
And how many have you submitted that other people really liked?
Thanks again…Interested in your response
I think that would be a good addition to the qualifications, a phrase that includes “clicking “I like it” on NEW pages other stumblers would like”". I’ve always wondered if that was the qualifier, as obviously clicking “I like it” on pages you’ve stumbled to is not the whole story, it’s more about the discovered/submitted pages.
I’ve never kept count of how many discovered pages I’ve come across. I should go count one of these days
Thanks for your response!
Well I certainly think its about discovering new sites that others like aswell, not just liking everything already in the system or it would be too easy to ‘game’ the system
Oh absolutely, discovering new sites should be a qualifier, but it should not be the only qualifier. Why is the person with 500 stumbles in the top 50 consistently? Isn’t stumbling also about visiting sites your peers like? Seeing what others in the world have to say about different topics? My favorite part of stumbling is to read the comments on pages already stumbled by dozens if not hundreds of other people.
It seems as if there is more weight given to the discovery of new vs. the act of stumbling in the ranking. Maybe a list for top 50 discoverers and a separate one for top 50 stumblers in general. I have stumbled onto other users who have far more than me, upwards of 25000 stumbles, and yet they are not on the list either. A better explanation of the qualifying criteria is my suggestion, that’s all.
Nice charts and all but I think your age chart might be a little flawed I’m a high school student but I know plenty middle schoolers and teens at my high school aged 12-15 that use stumble upon religiously as i once did when i was 15. I think all they do is lie about their age though.
I’m sure some do lie, but I’m also sure that a lot of your friends probably arent in the top stumblers list?
Wow, a lot of good information, and alot of hard work… Thanks for doing the grunt work. I love using StumbleUpon, but I won’t be making the top list as most sites I thumbs up had alreayd been hit, lol.
But over all, great info and kind of interesting that the demographic is what it is. I get a good bit of traffic to my site, but I haven’t really written about it.
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Hey!!
I’m 15 and ive been a stumbler since 14 so why is the youngest 16!!!!! uther den dat great work im not going to check if its rite so ill just take ur word fo it.
Hi Sharon, did you even read the post? Are you a top 50 stumbler?
Nice work. I’ve been in the top stumblers for a while now, although because life (outside the internet) is getting hectic at the moment, i seem to be slipping down the ranks, was 26 the other week, now around 41.
Thanks for providing the stats. We’ll keep stumbling the raw data
I’m sure you are a huge benefit to the stumbleupon community. So on behalf of everyone I would like to say keep up the good work!
i have been stumble since long but not getting traffic. Can anyone guide . my website is http://vedic.x3fusion.com/forum
yep just write some great content that people are going to be interested in. Don’t just submit anything and submit stories for others that interest you aswell
Give and ye shall receive
I believe currently about 20% of my traffic is from Stumble upon random posts. What I find interesting is when a post that had gotten a surge of visitors from StumbleUpon months before, starts getting another surge later. Which made me wonder if they time out URLs and new people suggest them or if they recycle them after so much time.
Oh well, I enjoy using Stumble upon when I’m wanting to mix it up and didn’t feel like going through all my Reader feeds.
[...] ViperChill social media has put together a very interesting look at the habits and stumbles of the Top 50 Stumblers on StumbleUpon. Taking roughly 4 hours, he created charts on sex, ages, content, membership length, and a host of [...]
This was very interesting. I’m a new Stumbler. I like it a lot though. I’m sure I’ll be seeing more of you.
you theories about “top stumblers” is interesting but there is more to stumbleupon than pressing the stumble button! Im not a great stumble button pusher. i prefer to add new content therefore over 85% of my 4,500 thumbs up are discoveries, ie. i am the first to thumb up a site. I have never been a top stumbler as i tend to be more active in the forums and also until recently was “r” rated. (it may have changed but last time i checked only “g” rated are named as top stumblers.) In the three years i have been a member i have averaged over 35,000 visitors a year so although not a “top stumbler” i am fairly popular. There is a theory that there are “top stumblers” out there than have never appeared on the list.
Interesting article and a great deal of work has gone into it. Well written too. This gets a thumbs up from me.
Excellent information… thanks for wading through the data.
Taking an average of the a range from 16 to 80 yields misleading results. First, I believe (I’m not sure) that the 80 y/o falls outside the bell curve for the rest of your sample and needs to be discarded as an anomaly. But who wants to deal with standard deviations and the such? 34 is not an accurate assessment on the sample population. Try the mean age of 25.
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