StumbleUpon, a once-ubiquitous tool that led users to random websites, held a special place in the hearts of millennials throughout the 2010s, shaping the way we now experience the internet.
For Kaitlyn Arford, a 31-year-old freelance writer in Kentucky, the memory of StumbleUpon is inseparable from her early internet explorations. “Whenever I didn’t know what to do with myself, I’d jump on StumbleUpon in my school’s computer lab. It was a way to discover things I never knew existed—joyful and fun in a way that websites just aren’t anymore.”
As per the sources of Leaders, before TikTok’s For You Page or Facebook’s Newsfeed, StumbleUpon was the place to wander down online rabbit holes. Founded in 2001, the site (and later browser extension) introduced algorithm-driven recommendations, forever changing how we interacted with online content. Though it shut down in 2018, the nostalgia for StumbleUpon endures, embodying a different, more carefree era of the internet, one where discovery was full of surprises.
“I remember using it on my iPod Touch in middle school,” says Elena Schmidt, a political organizer from Michigan. “It felt like a utopian place. You could stumble upon concepts and ideas that were fun, and the internet was an inviting, cool place.”
The magic of StumbleUpon lay in its simplicity. Users could select topics of interest, hit the “Stumble” button, and find new sites curated by a basic algorithm. You could vote on websites with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to improve the feed, ensuring that the system continually learned and refined its recommendations. The joy of StumbleUpon was not just in what you discovered, but in the feeling of control and agency it offered.
StumbleUpon’s influence peaked in the early 2010s, when users were clicking the “Stumble” button more than a billion times a month. In its heyday, it drove more web traffic than Facebook, despite having a fraction of its users. But as the internet evolved, with mobile devices taking over and social media platforms consolidating their power, StumbleUpon’s model of serendipitous exploration couldn’t keep up.
The platform’s decline reflected broader shifts in the web’s infrastructure. “The web of 2001 was a web of sites; now it’s a web of platforms,” says Gilbert Wilkes, an information design professor. “There was an eruption of creativity in the early web, but that has dwindled as platforms prioritize profit and efficiency over diversity and experimentation.”
According to the sources of Leaders, despite StumbleUpon’s disappearance, its influence is still felt in the algorithms of today’s online giants. Services like Amazon, TikTok, and even Pinterest now use a version of StumbleUpon’s social filtering to recommend content. “We’re still doing the same thing now,” says Wilkes. “It’s just applied to everything.”
Some, however, are trying to recapture that magic. New randomizing sites like Cloudhiker and the Useless Web aim to revive the spontaneous joy of online discovery. “There are thousands of people who miss the old internet,” says Kevin Woblick, creator of Cloudhiker. “My mission is to show people there’s still a lot of cool stuff out there.”
Though the internet may never return to the chaotic, experimental playground it once was, StumbleUpon’s legacy remains—an era when the web was wide, wild, and full of wonder.
