One of the Internet’s most popular procrastination tools is holding a contest to give back to some of their most frequent users. The discovery engine StumbleUpon challenged teams of two to four college students to get as many people to sign up for their site as they can before March 1.

“The purpose of the contest is to thank the college students that are spreading the StumbleUpon love all the time,” said Katie Gray, marketing communications manager at StumbleUpon. “We also see this as a kind of launching pad for the establishment of a student ambassadorship program. We hope to see it grow into something where we have teams of ambassadors on campuses giving out StumbleUpon swag and holding recruiting sessions.”

StumbleUpon is a discovery engine that finds the best of the web for each unique user. It allows its users to discover and rate Web pages, photos and videos that are personalized to their tastes and interests based on many different recommendation methods.

Ari Mann, freshman in Education, is on a team called The “Stumble Effect” with students from the University of Missouri – Kansas City, Vassar College and Northern Illinois University. Their team is currently ranked 26th out of 63 teams and have registered 23 new users for the site.

“We thought the contest would be something fun and different,” Mann said. “We all love StumbleUpon and found the prizes very alluring.”

The grand prize for the team that gets the most people to sign up is free lodging and airfare to anywhere in the country, a value of up to $5,000. Plus, any team that gets 1,000 sign-ups receives flip video cameras, and any team that gets 5,000 receives iPads.

“We wanted to reward college students, who comprise a large portion of our users, by having the ‘Stumble to Spring Break’ contest,” Gray said.

Some tactics teams are using include baking cupcakes and setting up tables in dining halls to sign up people directly, according to Gray.

Mann said her team is utilizing all forms of technology to get people to sign up for StumbleUpon.

“Since all four of us go to different schools, we’ve been going around and talking to our separate college friends,” Mann said. “We’re using Facebook, texting, and all types of technology to spread the word and get people to sign up. We’ve also been talking to students on campus and in classes.”

Today, StumbleUpon has over 12 million users. All the URLs that people ‘stumble’ on are user-submitted.

“We look at the people who vote the same way as you and predict what to show you based on those like-minded user’s interests,” Gray said. “That’s why StumbleUpon is really cool, because you can connect with people via interest, not just through your school or job.

Anyone who signs up for StumbleUpon through the The Stumble Effect’s website counts toward the team’s total. Mann’s team hasn’t decided where they will go if they win the grand prize, but Mann admits Hawaii would be nice.

“StumbleUpon is very entertaining,” Mann said. “It’s basically the whole internet customized for you. You can stumble around to different websites all over the internet and find a lot of interesting things. My favorite time to ‘stumble’ is when I’m supposed to be doing a paper or whenever I’m just relaxing at the computer.”