StumbleUpon Series Part 4 - A Different Perspective On Your Friends And Fans

Posted by Robdogg in January 19th, 2008

I know you have been waiting for the, how to make the right friends article. I have been doing a lot of research on this subject for the past week. I have questioned many Stumblers’ and have received tons of advice. I have tested many different theories about friends, and have worked many of them out. But first, you need to understand the friends system. You need to understand how it was developed, and why it is structured the way it is. At least in my opinion…

StumbleUpon Structure of Friends

First let me explain the structure, of the StumbleUpon friends section. You may have noticed that there are 3 sections of friends, broken down to mutual friends, you are fans of, and fans of yours.

Mutual Friends - Mutual friends are when both you, and the other person, both agree to be fans of each other. This means that you enjoy their stumbles, and they enjoy your stumbles.

You Are Fans Of - When you enjoy the stumbles of another person, and you want to remain updated on their article reviews, you can become a fan of another person. This means you will get to see their reviews on you, “what’s new” page.

Fans Of Yours - When others enjoy the pages you stumble, they can become your fan, the same way you can become another person’s fan. This means, they want to see your reviews on articles, which will be displayed on their “what’s new” page.

The Idea Behind StumbleUpon

What I believe StumbleUpon wanted to do when they created this site was to allow Mutual friends to scour the web for websites, pages, articles, pictures and videos, so that you can share them with Your Interest Group. Since one person alone can’t possibly find everything on the internet, it would be easier if a team of people went out, and submitted pages to a mutual database, of everything they liked on a particular subject.

If you put together a group of 10 people, whom all really enjoy auto racing, and you know that this tight niche group of people are only going to submit auto racing articles, then you, and those ten people are going to develop a highly targeted database of websites, pages, articles, pictures and videos on this subject. If in one day each of the 10 people added 10 different articles, you would have a database of 100 articles.

You can then stumble all the articles in your mutual database exposing yourself to 90 additional articles you were not aware of. Of those 90 articles you might really enjoy 10, 20, 30, or even all 90 of them. As you browse your mutual database of articles, you can give it a thumbs up, letting the StumbleUpon system know which of the 100 articles are most interesting.

When all 10 of your mutual friends decide to stumble all 100 articles, the thumbing voting system will track the most enjoyable articles across your entire group, ensuring those articles get more circulation to your fans and your friend’s fans.

Article Exposure Potential

Now let’s assume that you, and your 9 other stumble buddies, each have 100 fans. Your group’s article circulation potential is 1,010 people. Meaning you can potentially send 1,010 people to an article or website within a 24 – 48 period, which depends on how active those fans are, and how savvy of the StumbleUpon system they are.

In a way, you can view your mutual friends as a group of promoters (Similar to a club promoter). Your, mutual interest group, fans are your groups subscribers (Similar to an entourage or groupies). When you and your group of promoters collaborate to promote a specific web page, your group has the POWER, to send a massive amount of traffic to a website. This massive amount of traffic is usually within a 24 – 48 hour period, or as long as you and your promoters keep that article on their top review spot, combined with how long it takes all your groups fans to visit those articles.

The more active your group’s fans are, the more likely they are to visit a promoted article. The more niche your groups fans are, the more likely they are inclined to like the site and stick around. If you had a very diverse group of fans, it will become easy to get a thumbs down for articles, especially when someone who is interested in pictures, videos and funny stuff is sent to a site about making money, marketing or any other off topic interest.

Some may say this is gaming the system… But I think it’s using the system, the way it was designed.

What do you think?

If you are new to this series, here are the first couple of issues, on my StumbleUpon Series.

StumbleUpon Series Part 1 - A Commitment To Mastering StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon Series Part 2 - My True Intentions Are Not To Spam Or Game The System

StumbleUpon Series Part 3 - Where Does All That Traffic Come From?

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supermom_in_ny Said in January 20th, 2008 @7:22 pm

Great article..as usual.

Got a thumbs up from me and by the way.. you might want to turn your series into an e-book. It’s a great way to circulate your name on the net. Check out JohnChow.com for all the details on how to do it.

Can’t wait for the next article!

J.C. Said in January 22nd, 2008 @11:00 pm

1- so where is your link to s/u at the top of the page - got digg, del, tech and the others, surely if you are talking s/u you must be on it - where?

2- You get it but you don’t really know how it works. S/U for me and many others is about other Stumblers pages and what we find there - I use the s/u button on occasion - usually looking for a specific thing - I am all over the web on my own and so my page is 50/50 of what I find and what other Stumblers have found - not just friends but the people who visit my pages and their friends - Your articles are good and you make a good case on how it works and how to use it to your advantage but don’t forget the average Stumbler is fickle - from what I gather most spend very little time on any site they visit and very few click on internal links (I love to dig - and am often amazed at the trail of links I follow in a single tab - and I usually work on 20-30 tabs)

The other thing is just writing a review doesn’t work for me - that is when I go to a page and it is just links and sentences I look for something of interest but almost never thumb that Stumbler up and in all honesty seldom click their links - there are some exceptions - say the philosopher kings who have terrific insights but they are the exception (SobSister for example) - if I can’t StumblePhotoBlog or host an image I almost never do a review - the web is a visual medium, most of us were raised in TV - so no image no interest - As an example let me pick on

http://thenanny612.stumbleupon.com/

Not because I dislike her but because of this post I found following your links

http://www.socialdesire.com/2008/01/06/making-your-stumbleupon-profile-stand-out/

***5 Reasons My StumbleUpon Profile Stands Out

Let me be clear and say if it stands out it only stands out to other pro-bloggers and SEO phreaks, as a Stumble page it sucks monkey butt (my daughters favorite put down)
The page is sooooo boring and reeks of SPAMMER – now you may not see it but to a Stumbler this is a spam page – and certainly not a page I would click the next button on – so her top 10 are all I or most any other Stumbler will ever see and since I won’t be back all I will ever see.

Click on my name on the post link and check out my page – I am just a humble Stumbler with no influence but people come back again and again and go deeper into my pages – I know this because I get personal messages commenting on something I did months ago – Check out my Mutual Friends and people I am a fan of and you will see how it should be done.

This is why S/U will one day rule the social networking scene, people committed to being creative and interesting – not trying to drive traffic to a certain page or blog – As opposed to MySpace where the most expressive thing you can do is cut and paste code to your page (and people act like this is so awesome - ‘did you see my NEW background?’) – yeah you can blog there but you can blog anywhere – heck some people blog on S/U – Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us – are comment thread and link based – nothing creative – I use all three and many others ( the popurls.com aggregater saves a lot of time) but S/U is my real home on the internet – many of us dreaded the e-bay purchase because we knew this was coming and thankfully the community is large and strong enough to over come what we see as the exploitation of our humble but fun ranks – yeah gotta pay the bills but in the long run SEO and S/U is not a good mix – we are simply not interested in what you are selling.

Wow – this went longer than your 4 parts put together – I’ll be thumbing this up cause I want it seen – I don’t think you are a bad person but rather hope the S/U community begins to see how others are trying to game us and be able to recognize it

~cheers
=^. .^=

just in case I am wrong and the link on my name doesn’t work here is a link to my friends page - click on a few to enjoy what S/U is really about

http://aldoushuxleyscat.stumbleupon.com/friends/

Robdogg Said in January 23rd, 2008 @9:56 am

thanks for your opinion. I know many are concerned that there are those of us out there on stumbleupon to “SPAM” the system. You need to learn the difference. Just because someone like me submits articles on how to make money, or how to use stumble does not make us a spammer. This is just the information we are interested in. Nowhere does SU state that their website is just for blogging and submitting picture. It says its about anything you like on the internet. You may not like what I like, and I may not like what you like.

Me, personally, am not interested in photos, or art and lots of other crap and junk just cluttering up the internet as well. But i do not go and call you out on it, just because you like something i don’t. Me and the people like me will use SU the way we like, and the same goes for you and the people like you. We are not taking away from each other in any way, nor are we intruding on your space.

Let me be clear. If you are stumbling your own articles and messaging every SU member to checkout your site, then you are a spammer. But reading and submitting articles on SEO, money, and marketing is not. That is just our interest and what we want to read.

J.C. Said in January 23rd, 2008 @2:13 pm

Excuse the second post but I think I can sum it up quickly.

SEO types are seen as using the community not being a part of the community - what I am saying is be part of the community as a whole not just your own cul-de-sac.

Robdogg Said in January 23rd, 2008 @7:21 pm

i think you are right on this. Don’t use SU for your own selfish reasons. Just use SU and the benefits will naturally come…

StumbleUpon Series Part 4 - A Different Perspective On Your Friends And Fans

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