Thursday, August 05, 2010

Stumble! Stumble! Stumble! Stumble! Stumble! Stumble! Ahhhhhhhh!! Stop The Madness!!!


I've never been one to "collect friends" either in life or what has become an extension of our lives, social media. I'm also not one of those people who describes social media as "a numbers game" and I hate that viewpoint.

There's one thing all bloggers and authors who write for paid content websites share, we want to have our content read. Or viewed in the case of photographers and artists who utilize sites tailored to present their work.

If you're a blogger and/or contribute to paid content websites you're more likely than not to use social media to put what you're producing in front of people and try to expand your audience using sites like Twitter and Facebook.


I'm as enthusiastic a person as you'll meet when it comes to helping my friends get their content out. The friends I'm happiest to help, unquestionably, are the people who are equally as enthusiastic about doing what they can to support my effort.

In the same vein, if you have a friends who publishes whatever and you'd like me to help them I'll be happy to. What's important to me is to see that you'll be happy to help my friends just as I help yours.


A popular social media site for bloggers and paid content website authors is StumbleUpon.

I suspect there are people who sign on with SU to recapture the joy they experienced when the internet was new to them and they surfed simply to see what they might find. If it weren't for bloggers, though, when you look at it realistically, there wouldn't be any social media site as successful as it is today. More than anything people are on StumbleUpon because they have content they want people to see.


You have to do more than stumble your own content, of course, because there are vigilantes on StumbleUpon who think it's their job to identify people who do not adhere to the "Terms of Service" and work to have them banned from the site. You can't "trade" stumbles with your friends either, for the same reason.

One of the things that makes StumbleUpon popular, though, is providing means to share your content with friends, although that's a term SU no longer uses, and you can BUY stumbles by paying the site to make your content available {sic}.


There have been times I've been very active on StumbleUpon, logging in a time or two a day, and other times I haven't been active. Recently, though, I went through a period when I wasn't blogging and the only social media I was doing was Facebook.

When I returned to StumbleUpon I had 500 shares waiting for me, which is as many as you can get. No matter how much I stumbled I couldn't get 99 shares off my stumble button. That, I can tell you, is no fun at all...especially when you have a few friends who don't hesitate for a moment to send you one share after another.

Today I made a decision I've been avoiding for the longest time, to blow through the shares, without looking at any of them, simply hitting the stumble button over and over and over and over to get rid of them. That's the only thing thing I could do to put myself in a position again to help my friends by supporting their content which appeals to me.


In addition to StumbleUpon I'm active on Facebook, Twitter and ShoutWire. I don't dig Digg because they're too much ass kissing required to gain traction and I'm not willing to do it at all.

I set up an email - kilroy.gonzo@gmail.com - and would be happy to look at any content you have online which you'd like to see thumbed, tweeted, posted on Facebook and/or shouted. I plan at this point to stumble with greater regularity, but simply can't promise that I'll log in on a daily basis. I'd much rather be able to stumble and see what comes up vs. having to wade through share after share after share after share, especially one after another from a few people.


If you're active in social media and would like to connect, send me at email at kilroy.gonzo@gmail.com. I'll never ask you to trade stumbles or tweets or facebook posts, but I'm interested, to be sure, in connecting with people who are as interested in helping out as they are sending content out for support.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the post, its becoming overwhelming to keep up with SU, some friends share fairly. Some just share too much too often, its not reciprocal at all. I think you're making a reasonable decision...

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