stumbleupon.com????

Ironically.... I "stumbled" upon this website today while doing a vanity search. And if you haven't heard of a "vanity search," well, yeah, it means you search for your own name in Google. :-)

Anyway... looks like a harmless, website search knockoff site and someone had posted a review of my site, so I clicked the link. What immediately caught me off guard was that my site pops up within the framework of the stumbleupon.com website. Kinda like the old http "frame" days. My site is fully functional, with links, etc., only now there's this websites dashboard surrounding my website.

If you've had a website for any length of time, it's likely you can find your site linked here too. I typed in a bunch of names that I knew from NPN and sure enough there's lots of links and reviews.

My question is, is this legal? While I see full credit and links to all the websites, I'm wondering about "encasing" someone else's website within another website. And I'm assuming this website is a for-profit operation.

Is this something to be concerned about? Or be thankful there's yet another method for getting traffic to our websites. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts about your website being forwarded/linked through another site without your knowledge.

Check it out.

Lon

ps. Jim, I wasn't sure where to post this, but put it here since this gets the most traffic. Feel free to move if you think appropriate.

Stumble Upon is a search bar that you can add to your browser. What it does is take you directly to random sites within the subject areas you have told them are of interest to you. For example I have it set to only show me sites that deal with photography and drawing so those are the only sites that come up. "Members", those who have installed the toolbar, can also recommend sites which are given preference in the random forwarding process. Further, sites can be rated either "like" or "dislike" which further refines the type of site that hitting the "Stumble Upon" button on the toolbar will take you too when you hit it. They are not copying the sites. They are simply taking the user to the actual site. It is a mindless way to spend some time when you want to surf but don't want to wade through a Google list. Actually it is a lot like the Google "I'm feeling lucky" button (do they still have that?) which took you directly to a page based on the search words you entered.

Mine is there!

What they are doing is a copyright violation. One of forums I frequent is at Microsoft for the Expression Web development application. One of the MVP's is also a lawyer. According to her, such use is a copyright violation; Stumble Upon is using our sites for content on their site without written permission (in my case, anyway)

I certainly don't mind the notion of more exposure and driving traffic to my site, but I'd sure like to be asked if it was OK by me for them to do something like this.

I am curious if the MVP's opinion stated above is true. If so, I'll need to determine a course of action.

-P

Preston,

That's what I'm thinking. It's one thing to post a link as a "share this" or "I recommend this site" to others and harmless surfing as Jim is referring to. It's another thing, when "my" website is a page, subset of their website - or more properly called "content" of another website. The proof is as simple as the URL depicting my website:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/s/#3oZr77/www.lonoveracker.com/images.asp?category=&pageno=132/

Looks to me like my site is "content" for Stumble Upon.

Looks like a huge mountain to climb though....

Hey Lon - Google image search does something similar to this. Here's an example from searching for your name.

Purely based on the fact that Google does this, I'm guessing that there some type of allowance for this practice legally. It might be tied into the fact that it's legal to post thumbnails and copies of images for the purpose of search engine results. I'm not sure - but you're right, it might be a huge mountain.

David,

Thanks for the comparison. I hadn't thought about Google, but that makes sense. I guess ultimately it shouldn't be a surprise that our sites are linked to and shared without our knowledge all the time and as someone with a website should know... understanding what little files like "robots.txt" are and what they do are really important....

If anything, it's a good idea to Google yourself every once in a while...

Lon

Hi Lon,

Stumbleupon has been driving traffic to my website for months. I get about 500 visits a month from their site, and have made some print sales to folks who found my website that way. While I see your point about how your website ends up looking pretty much THEIR content (and I suppose it would be nice if they asked if it was OK), in the end one gets free exposure through their service. While I am just guessing this, I suspect that David's right about their being some type of legal allowance for what they're doing.

Personally, I hope they continue doing what they're doing...it's not hurting me!

Cheers...

Brad

Lon, What they are doing is like a hotlink. Your site isn't their content. They haven't copied it. If you download their toolbar and use the Stumble! button your go directly to a random site. If you are doing it through their website the only way to avoid completely leaving their Stumble Upon program is to open a window within a frame with the referred site in the frame. In effect they add a temporary toolbar to the top of the browser window. The URL reflects the fact that your browser window is split with Stumble Upon occupying the top band and the site they are referring you to (the part after the /) in the rest of the window. I have the Stumble Upon toolbar installed on Firefox and occasionally play with it to discover new sites. When you install the toolbar as part of your browser and look at the URL of the site you are on, it is just the URL of that site. Stumble Upon's URL is not there in that case because it is now a part of the browser. It isn't necessary to keep a connection to their site in order to allow you to make the next "Stumble". When you do it from their site, if they did not show the Stumbled site within a frame, if they simply took you there, you would leave their site entirely and you'd have to use the back button after every Stumble in order to do another. By splitting the window they refer you through their site and keep the Stumble button at the top of the screen thus allowing you to Stumble to another site without repeatedly going back.

Personally I think Stumble Upon is nothing to worry about. It is a very well known website which helps people find new websites and recommend good ones. I've had over half a million visits from them in the last year or so - a great source of traffic.

Stumble upon is actually quite a great marketing tool.
just register there yourself and stumble your own content on your website.
it can drive insane traffic to your domain if used correctly !


Wim

Given that my site actually appears within their site, I am still of the opinion that it is ethically off the wall, and perhaps a violation of copyright..

Will I do anything about it? Probably not. It's a mountain I don't really want to climb.

-P

I think it's a great marketing tool for your website, Lon. Interestingly, when I open your website, as you said, stumbleupon remains in the web address. When I click on my own website through a stumbleupon search, it only lists www.dougroanephotography.com in the web address, and the back arrow will not take me back to stumbleupon. I'm not sure why - maybe it has to do with my website being on smugmug.

Thanks for the replies folks. Apparently it's a fairly popular and widely used site that I didn't know about. Of course, how can one tell if a website is good, useful or not, considering all the garbage there is out there on the web.

"it can drive insane traffic to your domain if used correctly ! "

If Wim or anyone is out there still checking this thread, I would be curious to know what kind of traffic is being sent to your site? I'm not sure I want casual viewers who are just going to grab images for their desktop screen saver... or can you actually drive people to your site that are interested in purchasing images or services like workshops?

If anyone has any experience along those lines, I would love to hear about it.

Thanks!
Lon

Hi Lon. I'm unsure about the quality of the traffic - in other words I imagine it is a very small percentage of visitors (if any at all) that buy prints for example. However simply getting a lot of visitors helps spread your website, build links, improve your google ranking etc. Obviously you need to target a specific audience for sales but I'm not aware of any negatives to StumbleUpoun - would be very interested to hear any other opinions though. Tristan

Lon,
well if you sign up with stumbleupon you get to select a wide variety of topics that you are interested about, things like: art, fine art, photography, etc..
when you then stumble or thumbs up your own website or speciffic images on your website, you need to tag those, so if you tag those with, fine art, photography all those people with these interests will probably wander by your website at one point,
so it can potentially bring in some sales.

if nothing else it will help build your links and exposure.

Wim

Stumbleupon has been around for years, and people love it. Great way to "stumble upon" sites you might not have found otherwise. Getting upset about your site being found on Stumbleupon is kind of like getting upset when your web site shows up in a Google search.

Getting upset about your site being found on Stumbleupon is kind of like getting upset when your web site shows up in a Google search.

+1

Ok, alright already.... apparently everybody knows about this site except me. Mea culpa. I should have perhaps taken a bit more time investigating the site, it's purpose and/or benefits before posting my note.

I wasn't upset, probably just more surprised. I guess I wasn't expecting to see my website inside another's dashboard when I never had a chance to elect to opt in or out - if that makes sense.

I spend a fair amount of time on the web and this just goes to show you HOW MUCH stuff is out there and how it's quite possible that not everyone has seen everything or knows about every site out there.

Thanks for the enlightenment folks.

Lon