Use StumbleUpon without installing a toolbar

Posted October 2, 2008 at 06:36 AM by Iyaz Akhtar

Section: Web, Web 2.0, Web Apps, Websites

StumbleUpon is trying something different these days.  One of the easiest ways to use StumbleUpon was by downloading and installing their toolbar.  Now, you will be able to use StumbleUpon without a download and you won’t even need to register with StumbleUpon thanks to some new features StumbleUpon will be rolling out.

Their plan is to allow users to access their accounts from any computer.  In the old days, you’d have to download the toolbar on other computers to have access to StumbleUpon’s features. 

StumbleUpon is a recommendation engine that lets you click one button and find things on the web.  First you tell it what you would like to find, like automotive, tech, design, whatever.  Then you can click away on the StumbleUpon toolbar and have sites pop up that match your search.  You can recommend sites by tagging them and then the process kind of repeats.

Their website was incredibly hot for a short while to the point where eBay bought them.  The honeymoon’s over and eBay is trying to get rid of them.  StumbleUpon’s new features could be a method to drive the sale price up since eBay wants to recoup its $75 million purchase price (and probably would like a little profit).