Reel Pop

StumbleUpon, the browser toolbar and site that helps you troll the Web serendipitously, just launched a new site that helps you find online video.

The site works by indexing video from Web sites that contain embedded videos from MySpace, YouTube and Google Video (with Metacafe to be included soon, the founders say). When you visit stumblevideo.com, you're presented with twenty starter categories, such as cats, animation and martial arts. After selecting a category, you are then presented with a random series of videos, which you can give a thumbs up or down. If you're logged in, the site will remember your ratings and then offer up videos that are more to your liking. You can also view what other users liked or disliked the same videos.

Stumblevideo solves, in part, one of the main obstacles to finding video on the Web, namely search. Typically you visit video sites when you're referred by a friend to a specific video. You don't often search for video because searching for complex media is a difficult process -- it's hard for search engines to understand intent. But StumbleVideo learns your predilections, serving you more appropriate videos. It's hella cool.

The site can also be used as a kind of theatre. You can navigate to videos using the arrow keys. After a few seconds of no mouse movement, the navigation elements dim so you can better enjoy the video.

StumbleUpon says they have about 1.65 million registered users stumbling over 7.5 million sites. I've been using the video stumbler all day and it's really, really fun. The video below I just found. Have a go.