Let the truth be told, StumbleUpon is one of the best sites on the net for identifying quality sites of interest. Social networking sites and other sites that are designed to bring a community of individuals together have grown significantly in the past 4 years. The psychology behind this is obvious: people enjoy interacting with others and expanding interactive online communities make this much easier now than it has ever been before. If you happen to own a blog this can provide the impetus for a great opportunity to significantly increase traffic to a blog. As previously mentioned, one of the best sites for this purpose is the brilliantly conceived community StumbleUpon which is designed to bring awareness to quality websites and blogs.

StumbleUpon is a unique concept that provides a forum for users of the site to tip their hat to sites that are of great value. In a nutshell, the way StumbleUpon works is that the users can create a social network of like minded individuals who flag notable web and blog content that users come across by accident. Hence, the name – StumbleUpon. Within these social networks one user can recommend sites to others which, of course, would increase traffic to a particular site/blog. Users can then rate a site with positive or negative ratings and a positive rating can seriously impact traffic to a blog.

How does the system work? StumbleUpon is based around a plugin that affixes as a toolbar in a browser and when one stumbles upon an interesting page they can add it to the community. This is where you can squeeze in plugs for your blog and let a huge community of members learn about it.

What makes this such an excellent resource for bloggers is the fact that the members of StumbleUpon are specifically looking for cool websites and blogs. Not to knock Myspace, but while MySpace can provide great value to people looking to promote their blog the reasons people join MySpace's are varied. As such, many people on MySpace may not really be interested in a cool blog at all. With StumbleUpon, this is not at issue as everyone is on the same page looking for cool and interesting websites and blogs. If you blog fits this bill – StumbleUpon is for you!