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Comment by labrador | Hacker News Reader

> Tiktok has nailed the delightful "stumble upon"

I didn't understand the appeal of Tiktok until just now when I read your comment. I was a StumbleUpon.com addict in 2006-07. I spent hours a day on it, saw really interesting content and even made some IRL friends.

I have no idea why they killed that site. I'll give Tiktok another try.

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But back then, I assume the content was 90% original, 10% ads/marketing/brand building, whereas now it is 90% ads, 10% original.

You are correct

I don't get how that description sounds like a good way to spend your time. Why do you need hours of throway content in your life from people you don't have any connection to? Why not like go to the gym or hike or cook your self a healthy meal.

Because it's fun.

Right? Imagine telling someone “you’re having fun wrong”, ridiculous.

I did those things too, but instead of watching news or TV drama shows, I was on SU (I had to catch up on the shows I missed after SU died.)

I think they just never found a way to make money that didn’t destroy the experience.

I think Reddit also kind of replaced it. Back then, Reddit was more of a social bookmarking site like del.ic.ious but with expanded community features. You would go to the front page, and see a pretty similar selection of links to what you would get smashing the Stumble button that day, only it's been curated and sorted by the community through the karma system. Each link also came with a very well designed comment section where users could discuss it.

Somewhat. Reddit’s never been nearly as serendipitous as Stumbleupon

reddit was never social bookmarking.

Correct, it was a mix of Digg, Slashdot and old-school message boards. As far as I remember, it was the comment section that most people were interested in. The link itself came second.

They killed the site, because they ran out of money.

Probably a part of it, but a not insignificant part was the buying of it by eBay who had no clue what to do with it, then selling it back to the founders.

By that point or soon thereafter Garrett Camp had co-founded Uber which obviously worked pretty well and had less interest in the site.

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