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Around two years ago I took some time out to analyse the top 50 Stumbleupon users. At the time, StumbleUpon was just starting to get noticed by internet marketers and as the service had the ability to send a lot of traffic to websites, people wanted to know more.
These days, Stumbleupon is about 8 million users bigger than the last time I did this and while it still has the ability to send thousands of visitors to a website, it seems to get talked about less and less. Now, some people will argue that there is no benefit to being a top user of the service while others claim that you should strive to be one if you want traffic from the site.
In my opinion, neither of these are true. I’ve had sites that I submitted get tens of thousands of visitors when I was a nobody, and the same when I was a somebody. However, I believe that there must be some benefit to being a top user or why would StumbleUpon even have a page about them in the first place?
Discussions on that aside, I thought it would be interesting once again to analyse the statistics of the top users. From this we can get a general idea of how active and engaging somebody needs to be on the site (or not) in order to be featured as a top user. StumbleUpon describes the path to becoming a top user as…
To become a Top Stumbler, simply use the toolbar on a regular basis, clicking I-like-it at any page other members would like to stumble upon.
…but I think there is more to it than that.
Two years ago when I did this there were 50 users on my list. Now, there are only 25 and what’s interesting is that I only recognise one of the top users from the previous testing (starspirit).
Number of Favorites
Sorry to my British readers for selling-out, but I’m going with the American spelling of favorites today. The number of favorites simply means how many sites a user has ‘liked’ (clicked thumbs up on). As you can see from the graph below, there are a couple of users who are far ahead of the pack:
- Highest: 247,000
- Lowest: 2,918
- Average: 25,056
I am quite surprised to see such a low figure for the least active top stumbler. I assume their status is because they are more active in other areas of the site or have gained a large number of subscribers.
Number of Reviews
Reviews are comments that stumblers have left about particular pages. It is not reviews of them, but rather feedback they have given on the pages they stumble across around the web. The users are much less divided here than for subscriber statistics:
- Highest: 15,671
- Lowest: 113
- Average: 3,368
It is very easy for anyone to Stumble a lot of pages quickly whereas it is quite time consuming to leave reviews regularly. Therefore, I believe this statistic links in closely to why top users are top users. I’m sure StumbleUpon want people leaving comments rather than just browsing around all of the time.
Additionally, I have a feeling this works on a percentage basis. So for example, even though one user has only left 113 reviews, I would say that is probably a similar percentage of their review-to-stumble ratio as someone further up the list.
Similarity to Me
StumbleUpon offers a percentage indicator which shows how similar you are to other members of the website. I thought it would be interesting to look at my own count and see if I’m really close to anyone in terms of what I stumble. Well, as it turns out, I’m not.
But here’s what I thought was interesting: the majority of Stumblers are within a 40-50% similarity range to me. Unless I’m being stupid, doesn’t that mean they are all inherently close to each other in terms of what they stumble?
- Highest Similarity: 51%
- Lowest Similarity: 25%
- Average Similarity: 42%
Interestingly I was 51% similar and 47% similar with three users for each.
Number of Subscribers
Along with number of reviews, I believe this statistic is one of the most crucial for defining a top user. After all, it would be hard for spammers to get subscribed to by a lot of regular and active accounts. If a user is being subscribed to (which means people can see what they stumble) then there’s a good chance they find good content and may find great information relevant to a particular topic.
There is quite a large gap between the top stumblers once again:
- Highest: 5,404
- Lowest: 102
- Average: 1,108
Gender of Top Users
Although I’m sure this has no impact on someone becoming a top user, I thought it would be nice to look at the gender of the members and how they are split up. One thing I did note (which may not be surprising to many) is that only 3 of the 25 top users listed they were in a relationship. Some didn’t include any relationship status, but many clearly stated they were single.
Two of the top 25 users did not include their gender status but for the rest, the statistics were:
- Male: 14
- Female: 9
As with my previous analysis a few years ago, I expected there would be more males active on the service than women.
Summary
My account has ‘better’ stats than the top user who has the lowest figure in each of these criteria. However, I am also the furthest away from this person in terms of similarity than I am for anyone else. I’m starting to think that top user status is very much about what you stumble. I suspect that stumbling generic content that a lot of people love is more effective than focusing on a specific niche.
Of course I don’t recommend anyone change what they stumble just to try to get a leg up on the service. Finally, a word to marketers:
- Stop stumbling your own pages constantly, you will get banned
- Trying to game the system may get your entire domain banned from the site or limit potential pageviews
- Use the service for the reasons it was made: finding awesome content
- Write awesome content, and people will likely find you
I hope you enjoyed this analysis. If you have ideas for other analytical posts you would like me to do, feel free to share them in the comments below.
RSS Subscribers: 
What program are the graphs created in?
Excel 2007
Testing my new gravatar
Wow, didn’t know microsoft could create sexy stuff!
Cool stuff, thanks for sharing. Stumbled
!
Sexy Gravatar!
Cool analysis man. I can vouch for getting banned if you stumble your own site all the time. I had this with my blog and only when I changed hosting I could stumble my site again.
What is the difference between stumbleupon and digg and would there be a big difference in being a top SU user vs being a top Digg user?
Cheers
(2 days)
Hey Gee-man!
I was really curious when the next article on VC is going to be published, and I can say that you just assured me that it was worth waiting.
Btw Excel 2007 has some really cool features. I was at a researcher students’ conference this weekend and I downloaded the 2010 beta for my presentation, and I can say that some very nice things are coming!
Have a great week!
Zoli
I read this with great interest. Thanks for this. I’m a female (married) SU user, so it was interesting to see these stats.
Sorry Glen, you’ve lost me here. This is all interesting but I’m not sure why you’d want to be a top stumbler anyway. I’d be interested to hear the advantages:)
StumbleUpon has the potential to bring 50,000+ visitors to a website. If you are a top user, you have more power to make that happen.
Are there any copy write issues to having your artwork stumbled?
StumbleUpon does not steal your content. It simply drives visitors there. Videos on the other hand, are a different story.
I love to use Stumble Upon and if I can get some traffic to my blog in return it’s even better.
Stumebld!
See you Glen.
Having attained a place in the top 25 list a couple of years back with only 250 or so followers and only a few thousand stumbles, I believe it was purely because I had the luck to stumble sites that got restumbled a lot down the link chain of followers ad sub-followers. It seems that you don’t have to do all the stumbling yourself to get to the top, it can be done by your followers and so on.
The graphs should be bars, not areas. What your graphs implies now is that there are infinite number of users between users 1 and 2, as well as between any other users. Now the graphs can be read so that for example user 6.215064 has 1600 subscribers.
Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! This tracks the number of users who stop Stumbling long enough to click one of the stupid I like this or don’t like this buttons or doa review.
They aren’t the Top Stumblers. The people who don’t stop, no matter what, but keep Stumbling through the night, through the tornados, through hell on Earth are the Top Stumblers. Thats who. So there.
Why the hate?
Troy is being funny, not hateful! And i agree. We compulsive stumbleupon users don’t have time tp spare a thought as to what other people get to see! Give us more content, more more more! Hehe
Then you should know that giving content ‘thumbs up’ doesn’t just change who sees it, but also changes what you see from StumbleUpon.
Thanks for your comment
Dont really care who has how many stumbles… and who is at the top.
But great analysis though!
Just want to thank the creators and the stumblers for creating this phenomenon!
Have been using this for more than a year now and boy… the content is awesome!!!
I am especially hooked to the ‘Internet Tools’ section.
Stumble Upon does what Google cannot… suggest sites you would like…
Cant thank enuf…
Keep Stumbling!
Fantastic! Can’t stop using this app on my android!
I love that I found this post you wrote about StumbleUpon when I was Stumbling! Really great research and informative – enjoyed reading it! Plus always have an appreciation for ANYONE that can make Excel 07 look stylish.