I can’t make more than 200 friends, please help me

http://kkmmnew.stumbleupon.com/

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. :-)

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 :)

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~

Too many windows open at once, feel free to delete :-)

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.

I’ll have to read up on it.

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

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?)

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

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 :)

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 :)