The cool little utility that enables people to stumble upon interesting web content discovered by other Stumblers has a new feature called StumbleVideo going live today.

StumbleUpon provides people with a plug-in for Firefox and Internet Explorer. After registering for a free StumbleUpon account, the utility places a button marked Stumble! on the browser. Click it, and the browser heads for a web page containing something relevant to the interests selected by the user during registration.



The company's marketing VP Dave Feller told me in a phone conversation that over 1.6 million people have become Stumblers. Active users go Stumbling 3.5 million to 4 million times per day. As the membership grows, the depth of various content areas has increased.



Video has been very strong in its growth, as Stumblers continue to tag and share new videos each day. That put StumbleUpon in a position to do more than just have video as a filter option for Stumbling, as they launch StumbleVideo.



Feller called StumbleVideo "Tivo on steroids for the web." It can pair people with videos relevant to their interests, just as StumbleUpon always has.



But there's a difference between tried and true Stumbling and the new Video product. Where Stumbling across the web brings up a new page each time, StumbleVideo delivers each video within the same page. Also, non-registered Stumblers can use the new video site just like regular StumbleUpon users.



They crafted a new user interface for StumbleVideo, and like so many places on the Internet today it's loaded with lots of Ajax goodness. Using the direct approach as a Stumble user, one hits the big Stumble button on the Video site, and the site retrieves content matched to that user's relevant interests.



People can give the video a thumbs up or thumbs down vote as usual. A Channels button brings up a menu on the left side of the screen. Here the user can select a category of videos to Stumble, see a history of viewed videos, and also look at a list of videos the user has voted up or down.



In keeping with the community aspect of StumbleUpon, another button lets the user see who else liked the video on-screen. That menu opens on the right side of the screen, where the person can click on a profile to see more about that Stumbler.



On the business side, Feller said the new StumbleVideo will be more intuitive for advertisers. It sounds like StumbleUpon wants to hammer down its business model, which should please the angel investors who put some cash into StumbleUpon when the company moved from Canada to San Francisco in March 2006.



StumbleVideo takes the guesswork out of searching for video, since those searches largely work on places like YouTube only if the uploader has tagged it in a way that others can find it. Since Stumbling looks at areas of interest, the content it delivers should gain more attention from the individual viewer.



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Tag: StumbleUpon



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