Where is StumbleUpon? You might have heard recently that StumbleUpon.com shut down and is no longer providing you with a one-stop place to organize all your interests. StumbleUpon announced the change in this letter to their users, thanking them for the past years and announcing their new website Mix.com (which we’ll explain below).
If you want the scoop on what happened to StumbleUpon, we’ve got all the details, including:
- Why did StumbleUpon shut down?
- The best 8 sites and apps like StumbleUpon: what to do now that it’s gone
- How much longer can I use StumbleUpon?
Well, StumbleUpon may be added to the long list of defunct social sites, but that doesn’t mean you have to be completely done with organizing all your favorite things in one place. Read on to learn what happened, and which other sites you can use to fill the StumbleUpon-shaped hole in your life.
Why did StumbleUpon shut down?
StumbleUpon has been running since 2002, but didn’t adapt its interface quite enough to compete with today’s top social media platforms. So it just didn’t have the same popularity-driven growth that could sustain it, unlike websites such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
Instead, StumbleUpon grew slowly, taking almost 10 years to reach 25 million users. So its creators worked with the lessons they learned from StumbleUpon to develop a new platform called Mix, which will allow for a similar style of content curation.
The best 8 sites and apps like StumbleUpon: what to do now that it’s gone
So, StumbleUpon is dead. It’s over. You can’t just sit around and cry about it. There’s tons of interesting information online just waiting for you – so how do you get it without StumbleUpon? These 8 sites like StumbleUpon should help you get started.
1. Mix
Mix.com is StumbleUpon’s new website that aims to help you curate the best content online. You can create your own collections, adding interesting articles, images, video, music, and anything else you find online, so that you can share it with others. You can also follow the collections of others to find things you’re interested in. Some awesome collections have already been added to Mix, including:
- Out of This World – Space, the stars, and the possibility of life beyond Earth
- Mental Space – Mysteries of the mind
- Get In My Belly – Recipes, cooking tips, and all things that involve eating
- Nothin’ But Net – Technologies changing us and the digital revolution
- Jetsetters – All about world travel
Available Platforms: Web | Android | iOS
2. Reddit
Reddit.com is one of the most popular sites online, as people love its forum-style setup which allows users to comment on trending topics in any manner they please. You’ll find an endless scroll of videos, images, articles, memes, jokes, compelling stories, and more. Reddit also has a page called “InterestingAsF***” which curates the best content on Reddit, and things people are generally finding amazing or interesting. If you want to learn more about how Reddit works, we have a free course on how to use Reddit.
Available Platforms: Web | Android | iOS
3. Pinterest
As one of the hottest social bookmarking websites on the Internet, Pinterest.com is all about the pictures. Every bookmark put on Pinterest has to have a picture, video, or short animation to go along with it. Though it has much more powerful search features than StumbleUpon, some of its functions are similar. You can search for or explore content based on your interests, and sort what you find into custom lists called “boards.”
You can also “favorite,” comment on, or share content that you (or other people) find and put on Pinterest. One of the unique features Pinterest has that StumbleUpon does not is that it allows you to create bookmarks using pictures, videos, or animations right on your computer (though you can also create bookmarks out of other things you find on the Internet, too)! If this sounds like your kind of site, we can teach you how to use Pinterest!
Available Platforms: Web | Android | iOS
4. Pearltrees
Pearltrees.com aims to help you save absolutely everything you find interesting in one place. Somewhat like Pinterest, it allows you to add pretty much anything that you want to your account of bookmarks, whether it’s found somewhere out on the Internet, or just on your computer at home. This includes pictures, videos, songs, office documents, notes, and other websites. Its interface is also very professional-looking and easy-to-use; it functions very much like common windows-based desktop explorers, allowing you to drag-and-drop content into custom-made categories, or categories into other sub-categories.
You can explore other categories that share bookmarks that are the same as or similar to ones that you have in your own categories, and follow the activities of the people who created those other categories. You can even team up with them and work on a shared category together! The main drawback of Pearltrees is that everything that you put on it is visible to anyone, unless you have a paid account. So, don’t put anything on it that you consider too private for anyone else to see.
Available Platforms: Web | Android | iOS
5. Pinboard
Pinboard.in refers to its service as “Social Bookmarking for Introverts.” It aims to offer simple, no-nonsense bookmarking service that saves everything you need. Pinboard continues to hold its own in the social bookmarking arena. Pinboard allows you to store and organize content that you find on the Internet by using keywords called “tags,” and allows you to find and follow the activity of other people who have made their bookmarks public. However, Pinboard prides itself on its functionality and speed, without the need to be overly flashy, so it includes other features like being able to copy bookmarks and content from other websites (such as Twitter and Instapaper), and to save a list of your bookmarks as a spreadsheet.
It’s also great for people who value their privacy, since the website has no advertisements or tracking features of any kind. The downside is that you have to pay for Pinboard to use it, although at $11 per year (plus an optional additional $25 per year for additional features like automatically saving a copy of all of your bookmarks and throwing out ones that don’t work anymore), it’s not that expensive.
Available Platforms: Web | Windows
6. NextStories
As the title might suggest, NextStories.com focuses on helping you find captivating stories online. While you’re on a news site or blog, you can simply click your bookmarking tool button. NextStories will then overlay a preview of the latest stories from related websites so you can choose what to read next. NextStories takes all the work out of looking for other interesting things to read while you’re catching up on your news. If you’re a fan of sites like TechCrunch, POPSUGAR, or Lonely Planet, this tool could really improve your online reading time.
Available Platforms: Web
7. Discuvver
Discuvver.com is incredibly easy to use. The concept is simple: visit the site and click the button that says Take Me to a Useful Website. Discuvver will jump you to another website that has some kind of useful feature. This is like StumbleUpon at its base because it helps you find other sites you would find interesting. The thing it’s missing here is a way to customize it based on your interests. You can, however, add your email address to get a newsletter that helps you see many useful sites you might be interested in at once. That way, you don’t have to deal with the “roulette-style” functionality of the website.
Available Platforms: Web
8. Instapaper
Instapaper.com is a great way to save things that you want to read for later. It’s not a discovery engine StumbleUpon replacement per se, but it will help you bookmark everything you think is useful so you can examine it at your leisure, or later when you have more time to get into it. You can save articles, videos, recipes, lyrics – really anything you come across while browsing the web. From there, you can manage and organize it in the way that suits you, and read it anywhere across Instapaper’s many platforms.
Available Platforms: Web | Android | iOS | Kindle
How much longer can I use StumbleUpon?
StumbleUpon stopped working and changed to Mix.com on June 30th, 2018. Mix is intended to be a replacement for StumbleUpon, as another Internet curation tool that allows you to organize your favorite things (articles, images, videos, music, etc.) into collections for yourself – or others – to follow.
Simply click the “+” symbol to follow a collection, or save things you find online to your own collections to share with others. If you want quality, curated content about your favorite things, then Mix is for you.
