Can you Stumble your way to more traffic? Yes, but…

The recent headlines were astonishing. A somewhat unknown discovery engine called StumbleUpon, with a mere 13 million users, sends more traffic to web sites in the U.S. than 750 million-member strong Facebook..

If this stat is indeed true – and it appears to be so – then this would alter almost every company’s Facebook-is-the-center-of-the-social-media-universe strategy.

But is it true?

According to StatCounter, a web analytics company, StumbleUpon is now responsible for 43% of all major social media site traffic. Facebook is at 38%. The other social media properties were Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Myspace and Digg, and as the chart below shows, aren’t really even in the picture.

The stat was widely reported and confirmed by major internet-focused sites, such as TechCrunch and GigaOM.

Even though the stat belies logic, seeing is believing, I guess. And we have posted about StumbleUpon previously – suggesting you should consider it in your marketing mix and for certain add the icon to your site for would be Stumblrs.

But before we all jump on the shiny-object-du-jour bandwagon, let’s take a closer look.

First, StumbleUpon and Facebook have different goals. Marc Leibowitz, VP of Business Development at StumbleUpon, explained to TechCrunch that “Facebook is by design trying to keep you on Facebook, but with us every time you click we’re sending referrals to other sites. Like Google our goal is to take you to a new site.”

Second, StumbleUpon visitors tend to be more fleeting. A recent study conducted by online publication the Socialable indicates that StumbleUpon users spend, on average, nine seconds on a website, compared with 78 seconds (1:18 minutes) for Facebook users and a massive 126 seconds (2:06 minutes) for Twitter users.

This starts to add up.

Conclusion:

StumbleUpon may help increase traffic to your site, but it won’t necessarily send the type of visitors who are looking to buy. They’re probably more like curious onlookers. So keep focused on the big three for now: Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter… But be ready for Google+.