‘Serendipity’. There’s a useful word. It’s probably one that you use all the time –
and your friends love you for it! (Or maybe
they just regard you as a bit of a smarty-boots!)
All right!
We can save you the trouble of reaching down your dusty old Oxford
English Dictionary. Serendipity means an
aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident!
And, believe it or not,
someone has based a very successful international multimillion-dollar internet business
on this very concept. No it’s not
serendipity.com (although someone will no doubt have registered that name, long
long ago) It is called ‘StumbleUpon’ and
you have probably signed up already. If
not, you should try it. It works, sort
of, like this.
If your best mate is
totally nuts about Manchester United, and you come across a really interesting
reference to Man U on the internet, you might tell him about it or email him
with a web-link to the article in question.
Or if your cousin Flo collects Womble dolls, and you spot a funny story
about Wombles, you might send her a text message, drawing her attention to the
story.
The idea behind
StumbleUpon is that, if lots of people know what things really interest you, they
can all tell you about all the things they have come across in your particular
areas of interest. So your exposure to
happy accidental discoveries is multiplied many times over! There are in fact about 15 million members of
StumbleUpon.com out there to help you find those happy discoveries.
You will find links to
StumbleUpon and lots of other useful social networking sites in the
WebWatch2000 social media networking category (http://www.webwatch2000.com/portal/social-media-networks/)
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