I cannot add my Stumble Upon Fans as friends

14 Nov

Posted by pearl as Community, Social Networking

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Following are some of the people who have befriended me on Stumble Upon but I cannot add them because I have reached my friend quota of 200 Max!

I’d like to return the favor even though there are a lot of articles written about befriending only those stumblers you share common interests with! I somehow do not feel comfortable with that philosophy, and I’ll explain below why!

There are a couple of reasons why I would like to befriend ALL of the people who added me as their friend

1) The idea behind Stumble Upon is to find new and interesting websites and with over 3 million members now using SU, everyone is bound to have some interesting stumbles collected and for me to dismiss someone just because their stumbles are not about blogging does not make sense to me!

2) I have added a lot of people as my friends but not all have reciprocated it by adding me as their friend and however small an issue this is, it bothers me. So, I can understand how someone might feel if I do not reciprocate. Its like subscribing to someone’s RSS feed or adding someone as your favorite on Technorati or Bloglines. Isn’t that the idea behind technorati exchanges and and Bloglines trains? So, what is so different on SU?

But more importantly

3) Stumble Upon is much more enjoyable than any of the social networking sites I have participated in so far. Seriously, I have had the chance to talk with or had some interaction with so many established and well known bloggers, non bloggers as well as top stumblers, that have nothing to do with what I blog about and who I would never have met otherwise, that it would be foolish to now want to limit my ‘friendships’ in some narrow niche!

You can benefit the most from any networking site only when you have first gotten to know people, without thinking of using that relationship for some benefit! such as traffic, or exchanging stumbles etc. So, I am not limiting my Stumble Upon friendships to blogging!

Hence I feel I should be able to add any number of people I want, to my friend list. Since that is not possible at the moment, and until SU lifts the 200 max friend limit, I have been thinking of two possible ways to make room in my friend list:

a) remove those people from my friend list who have not been active for weeks

b) remove myself from those people’s fan list, who I added as my friends but they have a) not added me and b) have not been active in a few weeks

What would you do in this situation?

And if you would like to add me as your friend on Stumble Upon, please don’t hesitate to do so.

Oh, I don’t think there is a soul out there who doesn’t know all the ins and outs of stumble upon, but if you are one of them, here is some good reading material:

A comprehensive guide to Stumbleupon - Dosh Dosh
Increasing your StumbleUpon audience - LinkBuildingBlog
Using StumbleUpon to connect with people in your niche - Caroline Middlebrook
Stumbleupon, you’ve stumbled into my heart - SEOMoz
How to draw Stumbleupon user to your blog - Problogger
The power of the Stumble - Dana Walert

Technorati Tags: Social Media, StumbleUpon

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25 Responses

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November 14th, 2007 at 9:48 am
1

I’ve been concerned about this issue also. I’m not there yet but I’m moving toward the 200 limit.

There are some users who have added me as a friend that I have ignored for a few reasons:

1) They have been a member for 3 month and only stumbled 6 pages.
2) Their profile is listed as R rated.
3) They just seem really creepy and have only friended a bunch of young women.

I know I only have 200 friends available, I’m not going to spend one on one of these.

I’ve got people I know that haven’t friended me back yet and it does seem a little weird. I want to know why but feel funny asking. Especially since a couple of them ask me to friend them.

I think if I were in your situation I would go back through my friend list and cull the ones who have dropped out or maybe stumble things you don’t care about. I’d also drop anyone who ignored things you refered to them.

Just my opinion. Have a great day
Simonne

November 14th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
2

I had the same problem, but I dropped almost everybody who did not reciprocate, then I dropped people who befriended me for the purpose of sexi talks and stuff like that, then I dropped my brother. Now, this is it, I just let it be and hope everybody would understand why I cannot respond by befriending them back.
pearl

November 14th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
3

yeah thats weird when someone asks you to friend them but then do not add you as their friend… thats kind of pathetic, if you think of it “make me your friend, make me your friend” I consider it the same as when someone asks you to subscribe to their RSS feed, you do that but they never subscribe to yours!

I have those scenarios too where the person has a few stumbles and they friended me…. I thought about it for sometime, its the same as on Digg, someone would join it and the same day add you to their friend list and in the same afternoon you receive five shouts from them! at least on SU, I didn’t see that problem…

thanks for stumbling and commenting ad tracker
teeni

November 14th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
4

Sometime I am going to learn more about StumbleUpon. Right now I’m just trying to remember to stumble sites I like. Posts like these that you do help me to remember to go back and learn more.
Etienne Teo

November 14th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
5

I have hit a max of 200 then back to 60 mutual friends, then back to 200 then back to 100 friends. Only those who are willing to add me and let me add them with same interest then will i add them, i am starting to remove another set of friends again, i hate to do that, but if they are not committed in this social game, i cant help it.
pearl

November 14th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
6

SU toolbar is quite helpful teeni… the more you use it, better you get at it..good luck and do check out the links on SU posts at the bottom of this post… they will be helpful
pearl

November 14th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
7

hi Etienne.. I hate to have to do that, so I will be very strict as to who I remove… as I said, I wont remove anyone if they have been active and have *something* of my interest!

thanks for stopping to comment hope to see you around here more often..
pelf

November 14th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
8

Well, we do have different concepts about this thing called “fans.”

If I add you as a friend, it means that I am your fan. I like your stumbles. And I’d like to keep myself updated on the things that you find interesting. So if someone adds me as a friend, it means that s/he is my fan, and s/he likes my stumbles.

But I only add as “friend” someone whose stumbles I like, not necessarily someone who added me as a friend.

So I think it is perfectly OK to not add any of your fans as friends. After all, we DO have a limit of only 200 friends! If there isn’t a limit, we can add however many friends we like

(ARGH. Am I confusing you?)
pearl

November 14th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
9

No you are not confusing at all Pelf, as a matter of fact, while i was writing that post i was thinking about the same concept.. we don’t have to be fans of anyone who likes our stumbles! agreed! I consider this a courtesy practice since all of us are there to create relationships, find new and interesting material, so adding someone or not shouldn’t be such a big deal! SU is a very successful networking concept and they do not have a limit on the number of stumbles per day or on any one particular type of stumbles you can have or on anything else! So the point of the post was why the heck they have to put a limit on the number of friends you can have? why? whats the reasoning behind it? is what I would like to understand! thats all..

thanks for raising such a good point though … as it was in my mind all this while but didnt write about it…
laketrees

November 14th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
10

I don’t use SU …because the toolbar caused problems with my computer….
I’ve just cleaned out my RSS feeds because I was subscribing to some blogs both by RSS and email…..
I use feedburner exclusively now…which makes life a lot easier
I am rather fed up with Digg….as I get daily shouts for diggs…from people I don’t know….and I doubt whether any of them would reciprocate….it seems that art and artists are at the bottom of the list when it comes to popularity and “front pages”
anyway Pearl …now that I’ve had my whinge……I’ll pop back to my humble abode
Mike Scott

November 14th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
11

Thanks for the links Pearl, I thought stumble upon was a way to:
a. Find new web sites and web pages.
b. Get a big spike of random traffic.

I’ll have to read up on it.
David

November 15th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
12

I like what pelf writes. If I like your stumbles but you don’t like mine it’s ok, I can deal with that.
pearl

November 15th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
13

@Kim.. I think you might be having the same problems I was having .. latest upgrade of firefox doesnt work with SU toolbar and I had a lot of problems with that… I agree, Digg shouts are getting to be a too much for me to handle too but don’t worry, you are a popular artist. You may not know people but they know you so they want all your help to be popular good to have you back… stay well
pearl

November 15th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
14

@Mike: SU is the best site for finding new sites as well as meeting people and yes, great traffic generator too
pearl

November 15th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
15

@David.. good to have you comment here… I would still like to have that limitation lifted though! tc
pearl

November 15th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
16

Simonne: why is your comment getting trapped in Akismet? Im frustrated!!! and Im sorry! I love your sense of humor ..:D After dropping the brother, there shouldn’t be anyone daring to question what you do
Steven Snell

November 15th, 2007 at 8:08 pm
17

Wow, you’re popular. Who’s a friend and who’s not doesn’t really make much of a difference in my opinion. You can still give a thumbs up to people other than your friends and that’s what means the most (at least to me).
pearl

November 15th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
18

hey Steven…. I keep hearing it more and more so I must be no I am kidding actually… I agree, I always give thumbs up to anyone who has good collection or sites that are worthy…. but I wonder then what role ‘friends’ play! any idea?
Make money online » Blog Archive » StumbleUpon - No Place for Bullies

November 20th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
19

[...] I realize the internet is a rough and tumble place but the meanness and venom I have seen recently should be unacceptable. I have actually witnessed a StumbleUpon user wishing an author to “die painfully” because they didn’t like the article. [...]
Maurice (TheCaymanHost)

November 21st, 2007 at 11:53 am
20

I too was pretty amazed at some of the behavior of a number of Stumblers recently, hurling awfully abusive comments at a female user because they took exception to what she wrote. Difference of opinion is one thing, but this went way beyond acceptable to any reasonable person.

The world is full of such cowards and bullies and the perceived anonymity of the web makes them feel “brave”. Usually these type of losers hide behind avatars and do not publish much about themselves.

My advice for SU users who encounter problems is to report the user to SU, flag them and block them, and hope that SU will take some form of action against persistent abusers of their privileges.
Maurice (TheCaymanHost)

November 21st, 2007 at 12:00 pm
21

Oops, sorry Pearl, that comment was intended for a whole other place!!

Too many windows open at once, feel free to delete
pearl

November 21st, 2007 at 12:16 pm
22

no no, its okay actually that comment was made to me when AdTracker stumbled this very post nice of AdTracker to bring it to light!
caile

November 26th, 2007 at 11:56 am
23

Somehow I ended up on AdTracker’s site via a link on SU, and from there to here. This is why I never get anything done, I’m always getting sidetracked! Ha-ha.

Anyway, although I’m unsure what a “non-blogger” is, I do appreciate my inclusion in your article. (I think!)

As for the friends/fans issue: I have “heard” but can’t claim this as fact that we are restricted to 200 friends so as not to tax the server too much. Why this is I am not sure, but if you have over 4000 fans and you have close friends (such as those on your mutuals list) that you want to send a page to, that “send page” scrollbar feature would be a nightmare (those who use SU will know what I’m referring to). So I think that these handy little extra features would become overloaded and unusable at some point.

That’s not to say I like the 200 limit, especially because if a “mutual” friend deletes their account without warning, they remain as a “ghost friend” on your mutuals list, taking up space that could be filled by active stumblers! Currently I have 24 “ghost friends” which are basically spots I can’t fill yet the former friend is no longer there. I think SU needs to fix that issue!!

Lastly, what bothers me is that a lot of newbies to SU are unaware of the 200 friend-max policy. So they add you only to get resentful when you are unable to add them back so then they de-friend you. Arrgh! This really is annoying, and why I believe that there is too much of an emotional connotation to the use of the word “friends” list. I have a number of fans I’m friends with but I simply don’t have room to add anyone else without dropping someone who has already been there and I do not drop people without a good reason.

They should rename it “People’s pages I subscribe to.” Let’s face it: I use Bloglines to subscribe to a lot of people’s blogs (most of whom don’t know me at all) yet I’d never “expect” them to reciprocate by subscribing to my page(s). I simply like their stuff, so I add them in order to be able to visit them if I wish. It’s about seeing CONTENT you want to see. It’s not really meant so much as a social networking site along the lines of MySpace, etc. It’s not built for mass friendships (and face it: most of the “friendships” on huge networking sites are nothing more than anonymous faces).

So I wish I could add more friends, but at the same time, I do like to keep things manageable.

My biggest gripes then, are the inability to remove “ghost friends” so I can add new people in their places; the fact that they call it “friends” instead of “subscribers”; and the fact that new members are not made aware of the 200 friend rule upon joining, so a lot of people’s feelings get hurt when a friendship is not reciprocated. I hate that this happens, and when I was new at SU, I felt exactly the same way: “So-and-so thinks I’m not worth friending, so I’ll just dump her and find some other friends” ~ because I didn’t understand that with over 1500 fans already, she didn’t know me at ALL and of course she had no ROOM to add me.

So this system can be improved, definitely. I have no answers, obviously, but I’m just contributing my thoughts on the whole issue.

Thanks for sharing your post and thoughts as well.

Cheers,
caile~
pearl

November 26th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
24

Hi caile~ thanks for stopping by and taking the time to write a very informative comment

first of all, I apologize for the term non-bloggers - actually i was reading some help document when I wrote this, where it said SU is not a blog per se, but today I can’t find it in help section… but they do have a term ‘his blog’ or ‘her blog’, so i am not sure!

I didn’t think of ’send to’ tool bar option could cause server issues ‘coz I do not send pages to ALL on the list - but then I don’t think you can send the pages to ALL at once, as in mass mail, you’d have to send them to each and everyone separately! may be there are people using the feature for spamming others… and that I can understand could be a huge problem!

the ghost friend issue! I think if someone doesn’t exist, shouldn’t you be able to delete them? Or is it that deleting is not allowed when someone leaves? I am not aware of this issue at all, may be I do have some empty spaces and I dont even know Deleting them should be allowed, definitely needs to be fixed! I’m sure ghosts wouldn’t get upset

You are absolutely right about anonymous faces but then we are all aware of each other’s ‘tastes’ (fake or genuine) on there and there is a facility to communicate with each other, albeit anonymous, there has to be some degree of attachment with people we communicate! I really do not have a problem calling them friends but I also think that despite anonymity, it can still raise expectations - especially with newcomers - I know I felt bad (and still do) when I add someone to my ‘friend’ list because I liked their collection or content but felt they didnt think my content was worth reading! so anything to make the system clear to the newcomers would be better…

there is always room for improvement in any system, and I am not sure SU team realizes how much this network is liked by people, more so than facebook or any other popular media sites; (i think) and that they really need to make this a superior site!

caile - I really appreciate you coming out here to talk about this take care and please stay in touch
Sueblimely

January 19th, 2008 at 1:56 am
25

I think you have to look at what benefit there is to keeping those on your list who do not provide content or content of interest for you to stumble, especially if they have not added you. I am talking of benefit to them. If they are just a face on your list, someone you do not know from elsewhere, then the benefit to them is very limited so I would not be concerned about deleting them in favor of someone else you would rather be on there.

There may be some that you do know, who do not use SU much, but you know from elsewhere. I would personally keep those for the ’social’ side of social networking.