StumbleUpon Alternatives that still work in 2019 (and reason for its shutdown)

In 2018, StumbleUpon, our favorite content curator on the internet, stopped its services forever after being active for straight 16 years. Many think it’s the result for being inadaptive to the new generation social media trends. The website was stale and irresponsive on mobile. Often the content from the other site didn’t support its interface. It was time for a change. Now, upon visiting the StumbleUpon’s website, it redirects the user to a new website Mix, which also, at the moment, is our top StumbleUpon alternative.

After its exit, many of StumbleUpon’s alternatives came into the scene to organize your various interests at one place. Here, we are listing our top 10 alternatives of StumbleUpon.

1. Mix

Users of StumbleUpon were pushed to its replacement; Mix. Apart from having an option to import all your interests and tags from the original site, Mix has a better interface and is more organized than its predecessor StumbleUpon.

Mix groups all your favorite links and presents it in an easily navigable dashboard based on your past clicks. You can also save the pages to read them later across any device you own. As per the algorithm, the more you browse through the site, the more it will learn about your taste. Mix, unlike its predecessor, doesn’t load the entire page, rather it loads the title of the page, summary and the featured image. The new site works a bit like Pinterest where you organize your posts based on the topic. Mix does have most of what we liked about StumbleUpon, although we miss the surprising element of its original site.

2. Digg

Digg used to be what Reddit is, at the moment. In around 2010, Digg was much more popular than Reddit and StumbleUpon. The platform had a bigger user base compared to its competition and operated on an upvoting system. But then Digg introduced a massive redesign of its site, which pushed many of its users to the other platforms.

Over the years, Digg has restructured itself to adapt to the current trends. At the time of writing this, the interface offers various topics to filter your reading. The platform has separate categories for videos, editions, store and Digg picks. Users can sign up on the platform using their Facebook, Twitter or Google ID. The platform lets you save the story for later, and saves your breath for sharing the content over FB and Twitter. The platform has an excellently curated content and is definitely a viable alternative to StumbleUpon. Our second spot goes to Digg.

3. Reddit

In 2019, Reddit has become what StumbleUpon envisioned to be a few years ago. The platform features a forum-style interface where users are encouraged to engage in the conversations as per their taste. The content on the website is ranked based on an upvoting system, and cleanly sorts them in categories of top, hot, controversial and rising.

The platform launched its new redesigned site in 2018 with some of the most awaited features like follow, one-on-one chat rooms and profile. The other thing that makes Reddit an excellent StumbleUpon’s alternative is their moderators, who take their job seriously and delete anything that violates their policy. The platform allows you to save the posts for future, and groups all your content on a single page. Reddit also features subreddits, which act as a small community based on the things users love. The better part is, there are all kinds of subreddits on the platform. Here is one for people who don’t burp r/noburp. This makes Reddit a warm community to discover the best things on the internet.

4. Discuvver

Firstly, what a discomforting way to spell ‘discover.’ Anyway. Discuvver is simple to use and is very close to how StumbleUpon used to work. The site features a ‘Take me to a useful website’ button which takes users to one of the sites on their database. The database regularly gets updated, so users don’t have to worry about the repetition of their discovery.

As per our research, the one thing that Discuvver lacks is its incapability to customize the results. The button may take you anywhere on the internet without knowing what kind of things you like. Nonetheless, the site does a great job at letting you discover the useful sites on the internet. For the first time, we think, a site has put utility as their priority over the short-term interest of users. The platform doesn’t feature the ‘button’ on the sites to which it redirects you, so it’s a good idea to always keep the website open on one tab and pick desktop over mobile for browsing it.

5. Refind

On their landing page, Refind claims to direct you to the things that worth your attention. The platform allows you to sign up using your social media or Google account. The platform, like the other similar websites on the list, asks you to pick your interests and favorite publishers before curating your content. Here, the interface is very similar to that of Mix’s. The snippets of suggested articles feature their titles, cover images, and a line or two of their summaries. Upon clicking, it opens the publisher’s website on a new tab, which doesn’t have a button to go back to ‘Refind.’

The algorithm is simple. The accuracy of your future suggestions depends on the kind of stories you like. The platform allows you to save the stories on your account and lets you share them on your social media. Refind also allows you to browse their site based on your favorite publisher or interest, without pushing you to stick to their automated suggestions. The platform also features a search bar to directly hop on to a topic of your choice.

6. Raindrop.io

Raindrop.io is a bookmarking tool to save your favorite articles, photos, and videos in one place. The platform not only saves your favorite content from the web and apps but also save associated content based on its page type. For eg., when you save an article, it saves itself as a bookmark, and then it applies the bookmarking to other forms of content; videos, presentations, and photos.

The platform allows you to save stories from around the internet and organize them with auto-suggested tags, thematic collections, and bulk operations. It also features a guided fast search bar that helps you to find exactly what you are looking for. Users can also share their bookmarks with their friends and coworkers to collaborate. You can access Raindrop.io bookmarks everywhere, even right through your browser. It is available as a sidebar extension, apps, and web for all the major operating systems.

7. Google Bookmarks

Google Bookmarks is a bookmark storage service created by Google, and like most of the Google products, it is absolutely free. You can sign in with your Google account and save your favorite pages, websites, articles, photos, and videos at one place. Apart from that, it allows you to label and tag your bookmarks. The platform has a very simplistic design and allows you to access the bookmarks right from the Gmail. You can also take advantage of the search option, which navigates through all the bookmark pages, labels, and notes.

You can use the tool through the browser’s extension and its website. The platform features an export button to transfer your bookmarks from the other services to Google Bookmarks. The platform also allows you to browse through history. The site has all the important stuff around bookmarking. If that's something you're looking for, it doesn't get more reliable than Google Bookmarks.

8. GGather

GGather is also a traditional social bookmarker that saves your links. You can save your links and add tags to them, or just subscribe to the public tags for discovering other people’s saved links. Signing up for the platform can be through your social media accounts, or like other bookmarkers, use it through a browser extension.

We found that the best way to use GGather is by subscribing to the public tags, as per your interest, and then go through the public collection. The platform ranks its content by its popularity, and reflect them on your feed based on the tags you follow. There is a separate ‘Discover’ button which takes you to the most popular content on the website. GGather is a great way to save anything on the internet by discovering what other people are saving. In the absence of StumbleUpon, GGather seems a great alternative.

9. URL Roulette

URL roulette provides a random experience as StumbleUpon. It not only gives you a random popular website to discover the beauty of the internet but also asks you to submit your recent favorite URL in exchange for a popular URL by someone else. Every time you need another URL, you can exchange it with your favorite URLs, and the story goes on. There is a sense of contribution in the site which is missing in most of the other sites where you are allowed to stay as a passive user. Apart from that, if you think submitting a link each time is too much of a chore, you can subscribe to their newsletter. The newsletter delivers the weekly top 10 URLs from the website directly to your mail ID.

This randomness of URL Roulette makes it one of the best alternative to the original StumbleUpon experience.

10. Pinterest

Currently, Pinterest is one of the top social networking websites on the planet. Although it took off as the social media for lifestyle brands, there is so much more you can do with Pinterest. The site is all about pictures and saves everything you want with a snippet. Be it a picture or a video or an animation. Above all, it has a beautiful flashy interface which makes browsing an enjoyable experience.

Pinterest also features a much powerful search bar than StumbleUpon, where you can explore the website based on your interests and then group them as per your taste. The platform calls these customized groups ‘Boards.’ The platform also allows you to save your favorite content directly on your computer using pictures and animations. Pinterest, with its powerful search and visual capabilities, is an excellent StumbleUpon alternative.

Final Words

Here are our top 10 picks of StumbleUpon Alternatives that makes discovering best of internet a joyful experience. This list will guide you to your next StumbleUpon-like-platform.

Do you agree with our list, or do you think we have missed one of your favorite platforms? Do let us know in the comments. Also, to get instant tech updates, follow TechNadu’s Facebook page, and Twitter handle.