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I cannot add my Stumble Upon Fans as friends

pearl 25

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!

SUfans1

SUfans2

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 comments
pearl

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

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

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

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. :-)

uis

Dear,

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

http://kkmmnew.stumbleupon.com/