StumbleUpon
Born 2002. Died 30 June 2018.
StumbleUpon passed on 30 June 2018, having lived sixteen years as the first way to discover the web without searching. Born in 2002 in a graduate dormitory, it offered a single button: stumble. Click it and find something. Over the years it delivered content to forty million users and served nearly sixty billion stumbles. It predated the like button, the news feed, and the idea that discovery could be optimized. Its founder moved on to Uber, then to Expa, then to Mix. In May 2018 he announced the transition. StumbleUpon would become Mix. Users could import their favorites. The stumble button would not make the journey. He is survived by every feed that tells you what you want before you ask, and by the quiet conviction that the best things are still the ones you do not search for.
After careful consideration, we've made the decision to focus fully on building Mix and transition StumbleUpon accounts into Mix.com over the next couple months.
Replaced by inferior successor
Mourned by Those who liked finding things they had not searched for, early adopters who discovered the web one click at a time, and anyone who misses the pleasure of not knowing what comes next.
Mix, which inherited its accounts but not its soul; the algorithm, which replaced serendipity with optimization; and the memory of sixty billion stumbles, most of which led somewhere worth being.