At the start of next year, businesses, publications and brands will be able to join StumbleUpon as "Pro" users, curating both their own content and suggested content in order to reach a larger audience.

The StumbleUpon team — founder & CEO Garrett Camp, Director of Communications Mike Mayzel and Senior Product Manager Jeff Eddings — dropped by Mashable HQ today to chat a bit about the project, which is tentatively called "StumbleUpon Pro."

The idea is that businesses and publications can sign up for the discovery service as something between a regular user and a paid content provider. A pro account would essentially work the same way a verified account on Twitter does, giving the publication/company/business a level of legitimacy and authority that will entice regular StumbleUpon denizens to follow it.

Naturally, accounts like this won't contain merely a stream of a company's own content — that would be boring — but that content will more effectively reach interested users given the likely boost in following. The team wasn't exactly sure how the pro accounts would be denoted on the site — perhaps with a badge or some other indication.

Right now, it looks as though this service will be free, but businesses and publications can also pay to have their content featured more prominently using StumbleUpon's existing ad platform.

According to Eddings, this move aims to answer one question: "Who are the people who are here to discover stuff, and who are the people who are here to get discovered?"

Image courtesy of Flickr, Laughing Squid