StumbleUpon Facebook App

I’ve been a big fan of StumbleUpon for a long time.  They’re one of the first consumer facing online services to ride a distributed strategy – via a download no less – to a huge user base and a large exit.

Because of this success, I’ve always considered StumbleUpon one of the real authorities in distributed business strategy, and I’ve been eagerly looking forward to how they would handle the Facebook dilemma.

Would they go the iLike / Flixster route and build a self contained app that provided full functionality within the Facebook domain?  Or would they go the Upcoming route and build something that spanned both properties?

Well, now we have our answer.  The StumbleUpon Facebook App spans both properties, with the website recommendation output happening within Facebook, but the reviewing and profile browsing happening on StumbleUpon.

The key is in the content hubs.  While iLike has mirrored every band listing on Facebook so the user never has to go over to iLike.com, StumbleUpon directs Facebook users over to Stumbleupon to access a website’s review and info page.

This is a critical difference from both a user experience and monetization perspective.

There’s one other interesting thing to note about the Facebook App.  Once you’ve synched your Stumbleupon and Facebook accounts, the StumbleUpon app aggregates the site recommendations of both your Facebook friends and StumbleUpon friends on Facebook.  Flixster may do this as well (I couldn’t confirm this as I don’t have any friends on Flixster), but iLike does not.

Again, there are so many variables at play here, it’s hard to say which will turn out to be the best strategy.

My gut tells me that eventually Facebook is going to have to provide a more tangible benefit to app developers than the ego rush of appearing on the hottest apps pages.  Google’s recent announcement to provide grants and funding for developers of successful gadgets would seem to indicate that Google agrees with me.

Until those tangible benefits are announced, I think StumbleUpon and Upcoming are doing the right thing by keeping their destination sites in the user experience.