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
Mike Scott
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.