StumbleUpon may be one of the most innovative social website discovery services around. But the service has always had one major stumbling block: users needed to sign up for accounts and install a browser toolbar. And some percentage of potential users are just never going to take those steps.
Now StumbleUpon has removed those restrictions by rolling out a new version of the site that works without a browser toolbar. Just visit StumbleUpon and click on any web page to start stumbling. A JavaScript toolbar will show up in your browser window. You can find popular new web sites by hitting the stumble button, give stories a thumbs up, or rank them. If you have a StumbleUpon account you can also save pages. If not, hitting the save button will bring up an account registration screen.
It's also easier to find web sites from the main StumbleUpon page thanks to new categories like News, Art, Computers, Music, and Technology.
You can still use the toolbar if you like. But with the new StumbleUpon, it's no longer necessary.
Update: As C.K. Sample points out, the new toolbar-free StumbleUpon seems to be a ways off. When you visit the page, you will indeed find a JavaScript based toolbar that lets you stumble pages. But only if you're not logged into your account. When you click the stumble button, you're shuffled through a small group of pages, not the full StumbleUpon universe. And there's no way to save pages as favorites.
Ever wonder what you would get if you crossed Digg with Techmeme and gave the new site a slick Web 2.0 style theme? Yeah, neither did we, but that's a half decent description of Newspond, a news aggregation site that launched today.
Newspond is not a social news site like Digg. Articles aren't submitted by users. Newspond is more like Techmeme in that the site gathers stories from across the web using an automated system to analyze the topics that blogs and news sites are talking about. Articles show up on the front page or in a variety of subsections like tech, games, and science. Under each main article is a list of links to more articles on the same topic from other web sites. You'll have to click the "View All Sources" tab to see additional articles, but Newspond will pull them up without a page refresh.
While there's no user generated primary content on the site, Newspond does have a nifty commenting system which adds a social aspect to the site. The comments are threaded and easy to read. But you really have to play with them to get the full effect.
While Yahoo! fields merger/hostile takeover offers, the company's development team continues to push out new services. Today Yahoo! launched a retooled version of its video site. And Valleywag is reporting that the company will be launching a brand spanking new service on February 26th: A news and entertainment page featuring popular stories from around the web.
Yahoo! Buzz as it will reportedly be known will be something of a cross between Digg and Google Trends. Top stories will be chosen through a combination of user votes and popular search results.
But Digg has one thing that Yahoo! Buzz won't. At least not immediately. And that's a list of links from an unlimited number of web pages. Yahoo! Buzz will only feature links to about 100 web publishers at first. Eventually the company will reportedly open Buzz up to the Yahoo! Publisher Network, which means that anyone who sells Yahoo! ads on their site could be featured on Yahoo! Buzz.
While that might sound like a good reason for people to sign up for the publisher network, as incentive to get more social networking traffic, it also means that Yahoo! Buzz is by definition going to be more limited than Digg, StumbleUpon, or other social news and bookmarking sites. But this is all rumor and speculation at this point. It's possible Yahoo! Buzz won't be as limited as Valleywag suggests. Or maybe it's not even real.
If you go to buzz.yahoo.com today you'll find a page with top search results trends. But if Valleywag is correct, that site will be the future home of Yahoo! Buzz.
Social news service Reddit is about to get a whole lot more social, if that's possible. Like other popular social news/link web sites including Digg and StumbleUpon, Reddit features a long list of user-submitted links to articles, images, videos, and pretty much anything anybody ever thought was useful. Users can vote stories up or down and the top stories are featured on the front page.
It's pretty tough to get a story on the front page of Reddit, but the service offers a number of subcategories, which it calls subreddits. So while the link you submitted with a picture of an entire Star Wars battle scene constructed of Legos might not make the front page of Reddit Proper, you might be able to hit the front page of legos.reddit.com. You know, if that particular subreddit existed.
And pretty soon it might. Reddit has announced the launch of a build your own subreddit feature. Users will be able to create public, restricted, or private reddits that can be shared with the whole world or just a small group of friends. The service is in private beta right now, but should be made publicly available within a week or so. In the meantime, you can apply for the private beta by sending an email to feedback at reddit.com with the subject "omg me please." Seriously, that's how you apply.
We rarely get through a day without hearing about global warming, and how to make our lives a bit greener. Now Hugg brings it all online.
Hugg, similar to the social news website digg, allows users to vote up and down top news stories. But this site was built by the folks behind the popular eco-blog Treehugger, and it concentrates on green news. With an array of user submitted green news from green gift giving, practical ways to washing clothes and eco-friendly flooring, Hugg is on its way to being your one stop shop for the latest green news and trends in the marketplace.
Categories include architecture, beauty, celebrity, fashion and food. It is a relatively new site that is a bit low on the user submitted news at the moment, but it is growing with at least a few stories hitting the website each day.
So if you're feeling a little green, check in to Hugg to see what the hottest and freshest eco news is of the day.
Mixx is emerging from private beta today, which means you can check out the latest Digg wannabe without an invitation.
We first looked at Mixx a few weeks ago, and it shows some promise. Mixx works the same way as Digg, Reddit, or pretty much any other social news/voting site you may have seen. Users submit links to articles they think are interesting. Then other users vote articles up or down until the most popular items are on the front page, making it a useful source of news you're interested in.
While Digg has been branching out into diverse subject matter lately, the site is dominated by technology news. Mixx is hoping to attract users interested in technology, news, politics, and other areas. You can click on various tabs to see news related to each topic.
But what really sets Mixx apart is its personalized homepage. You build a profile that includes your interests and you can see the top news in each category all in one place. While Digg is all about the wisdom of crowds, Mixx is about personalization -- and the wisdom of crowds.
MSNBC has acquired Newsvine, a socially driven news site. Newsvine will continue to operate as an independent news site and will not be folded into MSNBC.com, but Newsvine technology will be added to the MSNBC website.
That means you'll probably see more social features including user-generated articles and links to news elsewhere on the web. Content from Newsvine columnists could also wind up on MSNBC's home page, giving citizen journalists more exposure.
The deal also means Newsvine will have more staff, more resources, and the ability to roll out improvements to the site more often. Newsvine currently has articles and images from the Associated Press, and now you'll see MSNBC content as well.
Mixx is a new social news site that recently launched an invitation-only beta. The service looks and works a lot like Digg, and even has a four-letter name that looks like someone meant to type three letters but didn't lift their hand from the keyboard in time.
While Mixx obviously doesn't have the kind of enormous user base that makes Digg work so well, the site does have a nice clean interface and a few nifty features. For example, Mixx adds a personal home page. You can select specific areas of interest like news, politics, or technology. When you login to Mixx, you'll be greeted with a start page showing the top user-submitted stories in each of those categories. If you'd prefer, you can still browse each of category page individually.
Mixx has separate tabs for popular pictures, videos, or stories. But while you can see thumbnails of popular images, there's no thumbnail preview for videos, which is a little frustrating.
Another nice Mixx feature is the ability to create private groups. You can submit links that only members of your group will be able to see or vote on.
We told you about the news that Netscape was planning to reorganize its social news section away from Netscape, and bring it all together in its own unique site. The time has now come, and Propeller has officially launched, Netscape has been moved, feedback is being implemented, performance concerns and technical glitches are getting worked out and we can now make our mind up whether Propeller will live in our bookmark lists.
What's next for Propeller? The content will find its way over to the new Netscape portal as well as on AOL news. Feel free to submit your comments and thoughts about Propeller to the team, they want to hear it.
