A few days ago, StumbleUpon introduced a new feature, where the user can customize the thumbnails of your own blog.
Before this new option, next to a submission was the avatar of the first submitter. Now, next to a submission, users can see a thumbnail of the submitted content.

While stumbling, I noticed that this feature has a much more important role than I first thought. In fact it seems, that the substitution of the avatar icons with a thumbnail of the site increases the diversity and objectivity of StumbleUpon submissions.

How we scan StumbleUpon

It is a well known fact, that when we visit a website we don’t really read it but mostly scan it.

I’m an active stumbler for quite some time and this minor change made me aware how I actually scan the StumbleUpon site.
My tendency when looking at my “What’s New” tab, was to check first the title of the submission and then the avatar of the submitter. Then I would unconsciously filter the submission according to those two parameters: if the title was intriguing, I would click on it. If the title wasn’t intriguing but I knew and really liked the submitter, I would still click on the link.
So what I was actually doing is putting each submission through a biased filter; sometimes it wasn’t the submission that drew my interest but the person who submitted it.

This is of course a very well observed tendency in social networks; our preferences and choices are highly influenced by the people we know, trust and follow.

The thumbnail feature of StumbleUpon

This thumbnail is exactly in the same position, where the avatar previously was. Since this has drawn my attention so intensively, it should mean that looking at the avatar was really a fundamental aspect of reading the StumbleUpon site.

I believe, that this simple size decrease of the avatar’s icon plays an important role in the way we judge, click and follow stumbles.

This is of course my personal observation on the subject. I really wonder, if you have also noticed the same behavior when stumbling. Did you also scan the stumbleUpon pages according to the submitter?