Cameron Olthuis

I had no idea I was a top stumbler on StumbleUpon until tonight but that’s pretty cool. It’s nice to be a valued member in a community that you’re so actively involved in.

Our most active and helpful members. To become a Top Stumbler, simply use the toolbar on a frequent basis, clicking I-like-it at any page other members would like to stumble upon.

I’ve been a big fan of StumbleUpon for over a year now and use it on a regular basis. I know it inside and out but never imagined I would be considered one of the top users among the millions who use it.

If you’re not using StumbleUpon I’d highly recommend checking it out, its a great way to discover new sites of interest as well as sharing your favorites with others.

Update: Last.fm’s chart looks good…

Last year I wrote a couple of posts on how getting on TechCrunch isn’t a viable marketing plan. While a TechCrunch write up can certainly be a great kick-start to your marketing campaign, by no means is that traffic spike alone going to make your company a success.

A good comparison would be getting on the homepage of Digg. They will both result in a huge spike in traffic, attention from key people, a few sign ups, and a bunch of links from other bloggers but the problem is that after a few days you’re back where you started. Ok, so maybe you have a little more traction but it won’t be enough so you need to keep moving forward. Unless you have a solid PR strategy and this will be an ongoing campaign you need to have a more well rounded marketing strategy, one that results in a graph that is up and to the right, not spikes.

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Are you in San Diego? If so read on…

Every month we hold a Refresh meetup where a bunch of us web nerds get together so we can talk shop and drink coffee. Sometimes we have formal presentations but usually we just get together and discuss a central theme for the month. Tomorrow is that time of the month again so if you’re in San Diego or the surrounding area come on out.

This month we’ll be talking about social media, both from a users and marketers perspective. The meeting location is at Milano Coffee Co. See you there.

For of those of you who maybe don’t spend as much time on the web as I do, you’re probably wondering what MyBlogLog is? It’s a small, bootstrapped, social network for bloggers. They recently had a win by selling to Yahoo for $10 - $12 mil.

So the reason they won? In two words, their widget. The whole success of that company was because of their widget. Without the widget they would have never grown they way they did. And fortunately for them they were the first ones to think of it. Other social networks could’ve made the exact same type of widget and it probably would’ve worked really well. The whole blogging connection didn’t hurt either.

Hell, other social sites could probably still create a similar widget that would work. Lets take Digg for example; if they created a widget where you could see which diggers were visiting your site it would probably work. Not only would it increase the user base but it would also strengthen the core of the overall community.

Overall MyBlogLog was a great idea that was properly executed, but it also makes for a great widget marketing example.

PS - Here is my MyBlogLog page, but I don’t use the widget.

Link: These ads are pretty fun to watch, simple revenue model too.