For me, StumbleUpon is a great place to make connections, see great pictures, and find articles or sites that I would otherwise not be exposed to. The whole idea of SU is to share great finds with your friends and for great content to get exposure.
This concept has evolved, to say the least. Now you may be exposed to sites that are not relevant to your preferences just because it has been thumbed up many times by your friends, and their friends, and so on. These sites have been “pushed” through the system, for the sake of traffic/views. Recently SU has been trying to combat this situation by adding the share feature, and even offering advertisement etc. In addition, they are banning “circles” of mutuals that seem to be sharing, thumbing, and reviewing the same sites.
If you happen to be in one of these “circles,” you run the risk of getting “ghost” banned or completely banned.
Ghost Banned on StumbleUpon: You can thumb up, thumb down, discover… pretty much anything a regular user can do. The only thing is, your efforts don’t count. You can tell if you’re “ghost banned” by discovering a page, opening up a different browser, and visiting the review page of the site you just discovered. If it says “Discovered by someone” and not you, you’re a ghost. No word yet on how to reverse this.
Here are some things to avoid:
As you know the share feature can be pretty annoying. I usually have around 50 pages waiting for me a day, and it’s very hard to keep up with. Most of the pages sent to me are from my social media friends who are also on Digg, Reddit, etc. They are sending me things they like or want to promote. Now, this is actually not against TOS as long as it isn’t their personal site, however, it’s usually a site that is beneficial to them in some way, and that is against TOS.
SU has caught on to this particular “gaming” of the system, and therfore they are banning not only the people who own the site who are “pushing” it, but the people who actually thumb these sites up often. This may seem a little unfair because you are just trying to be nice and a good social media friend. Just giving it a thumb shouldn’t be that harmful to you. However, it is necessary on their part if you think about it. I have been very weary of discovering my friend’s sites since the banning initially began several months ago. I personally will discover what I truly like, and what I feel is relevant to my basic theme or what I believe in, but I can no longer do this for some of my favorites, and this to me is the unfortunate part.
Unfortunately, the friends who have good content will have to understand that you cannot keep thumbing up their stuff all the time. If you continue to do this for anyone, you will be flagged eventually. Remember, you don’t have to review it, you just have to thumb it and it becomes a red flag when you do this often for the same source. Once you get banned or ghost banned, you could lose all the hard work you have put into your discoveries.
The whole point is for diversity. SU wants different sources. They want content from around the Internet – good content/pictures that deserve exposure based on what people like to see/read. In order to assure this, they must not encourage the same sites getting pushed through the preference pages simply because your friends shared it with a ton of other friends who all thumb it just because they asked them to through the share feature. You would not be exposed to anything other than a handful of sites if this continued.
In conclusion, your best bet is to just say NO. You are not obligated to thumb every page sent to you. If you are wanting to have reciprocated thumbs or reviews when you have a good site etc..then they will thumb it without you asking if it’s good. If you are discovering spammy sites whose content isn’t really any good, then SU is not the place to go. One thing to keep in mind is the timing. Make sure that some of your top friends are online before you make a discovery if you are wanting it to get exposure immediately. In theory, they will see the page even if you don’t sent it if they’re subscribed to you. If the content is good enough, it will get thumbs and reviews.
The only way to get loyal subscribers however, is to make sure you are discovering worthy material. They will follow you.
Many serious users on SU are picky about what they are looking at, and if they notice they are being forced to view things that are not their preference or the same sources day after day, they will flag you or just stop looking all together.
Another tip is if you mistag a discovery, you might as well just pack it up. There was a time when marketers/spammers were tagging their content with “viewable” or popular tags in order for it to be seen more often. However, their tags were not relevant and were misleading. These people were banned pretty quickly. Just be mindful of your tags – make certain it fits.
Send stuff to different friends each time, not just everyone all the time if you plan on doing the share feature often. Make sure the content you are sending them is at the very least pretty good and from different sources. Chances are, if it’s not interesting enough for you to read it or look at it yourself, then they won’t either and you will get a “blind” thumb. Eventually this will lead to you and them getting banned. If you have a good post, and most of your friends thumb it or give it a review without you asking, don’t be fearful of it being flagged just because most of your friends thumbed it up because chances are that if they did this without you asking, others who are not your friends will as well (this is how you get new subscribers and friends in the first place). This is very good for you simply because it shows that you are reaching a more diverse audience based on a good post/discovery, rather than a forced one, and SU will see that. You will be more rewarded on SU for having good content more than most places. SU also loves good pictures, and it’s a great place to find some never-seen-before photography etc.
For those of you who are planning on using it as a traffic generator, your time will be short if you are posting trash or asking the same people to thumb the same stuff all the time. That is the difference I have noticed on SU versus any of the other social media sites, and that is why it’s my favorite place to be on the Internet.
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Read more StumbleUpon Tips right here.
Interesting article. There is someone that tends to stumble every post of mine. If she gets to it before anyone else does and “discovers” it, I get no hits or next to no hits from that discovery, despite the fact that she has over 4000 favourites on SU. It seems like she stumbles anything she finds on a particular topic, rather than just the things that are really good. She doesn’t show up as a “ghost” but I wonder if her power has somehow been compromised by the amount of junk that she has stumbled in the past. So whether she stumbles a ho-hum post of mine or a great post of mine, it tends to go nowhere.
If someone with a much lower number of favourites discovers one of my posts, I almost always get a good number of hits from it because the initial stumble will result in others seeing it who will then usually give it a thumbs up too.
Anyways, I’m rambling, but I’ve considered asking this person NOT to stumble my stuff because it does more harm than good.
Thoughts?
I am glad you are concerned. I hope I don’t get Ghost Banned, because I like visiting different sites of interest and finding out new things.
Thx SU
Tammy
How do you account for the new SU.PR which StumbleUpon has released to allow people to ‘self-promote’ and in fact encourage you to thumb up your articles for other SU users to ‘view’?
I don’t want to get banned or ‘ghosted’ for using SU.PR. So what is your advice on this?
Timberwolf
@ Annie ‘PhD Parenting’
That is a good question. If I were you, I would send them a message to let them know that it is effecting your traffic. If the same person is discovering I have also found that the traffic tends to decrease over time, so this may or may not have to do with that person’s history of discoveries, rather the algorithm. So, the best thing IMO you can do without hurting their feelings, is to make sure that you express how extremely grateful you are for their interest in your stuff, but that it is actually hurting you because the algorithm will not allow for you to get as much exposure if the same person is discovering it. May be they will be understanding.
I hope this helps Annie, and good luck!
@ Timberwolf
Good question. Su.pr is designed to basically send visitors directly to your site via 301 redirect. They also get to see other posts that you have made and that they can click on giving you a lot more exposure. This is an awesome tool for Twitter users especially, but it’s purpose is to get great content more exposure, faster.
Even though this feature is designed to increase traffic, it doesn’t encourage people to spam their stuff, although initially it may seem easier in the eyes of the spammer. However, if a spammer is posting their spammy sites, then chances are they will be flagged even more through that feature, being that it allows the site to be viewed more easily in a relatively short amount of time. In other words, it won’t last long if it ain’t good, and may even get them banned more quickly. Additionally, the analytics are public so the source of traffic can be viewed, which seems like a tool to actually combat gaming. Natural posts get traffic from a variety of sources. If someone was gaming the system, this would make it more obvious because chances are their sources of traffic would be the same nearly every post.
I think it is a great way to basically force people to submit worthy material because that is what the public demands. Does this make sense? I am still learning about su.pr, so this is in no way expert advice, but it’s the best I have.
I hope I have answered your question.
I see promotions on the net for getting your pages stumbled or to trade stumbles. Evidently this is not a good thing to get involved with.
Thanks for the enlightening post.
I hope this Ghost banning thing is just a myth because when ever I discover something it’s not showing under my discovery …
SU is censorship heaven in that it doesn’t fully rely on the user community to determine if someone is a spammer or not. It relies on peoples emotions. If you’re the kind of person who posts your honest feelings on an issue and you use words like “shit” “fuck” “ass” or whatever, then you will be ghosted. If SU had it their way, they’d charge you for every time you pushed that little button. There is an alternative for SU in the making that encourages freedom of speech and expression and doesn’t ghost people or mark them as spam. It just lets users block someones comment or blog their profile or recommendations but doesn’t block them from everyone. There is also not a review character limit and no arbitrary porn privileges that inevitably label you as a bad person. You see, I subscribe to adult content but I don’t share adult content and yet, when you visit my SU blog, it says “PORN” in big letters on the left showing my topics. This is not fair because clearly people want to keep their porn searching private but now I don’t make friends, I don’t get subscribers, none of my reviews are read, my discoveries are blinded to people because I’m a ghost all because I said “this shit sucks” on some review or because I thumbs upped some chick taking it 3 different holes. I must be a really bad guy. I guess I’m not really StumbleUpon quality and should probably just leave huh? Good idea.
I have made it clear on my profile that I will not thumbs up sites which are just adsense sites or sites with little content. After time, I drop the people who send these sites.
Stumbleupon is just channel surfing – looking for new stuff. Not blindly promoting any garbage.
@Justin
That thing on the ‘right’ are your tag clouds which are there for the purpose to allow people to see if you have the same interests as them. You cannot hide those, but I can say that I use tag clouds to determine if I want to add someone, in addition to other information available. People don’t have to automatically see the pages you have thumbed up, and you do that by going into preferences and changing it to show your reviews and blogs, rather than pages you liked. However, if someone is interested in seeing the specific pages you have thumbed, all they have to do is click on ‘likes’.
I wouldn’t suggest leaving any kind of profanity on any review, simply because every one will see it who visits that pages’ reviews. If you want to use it, then you should leave it on appropriate places where the people do not care. I personally don’t like to read a bunch of profanity in a review because it isn’t helpful to most people. It doesn’t actually contribute anything. And when people see it, they will want to get rid of it. It makes it sound like you are a troll or something. Most social sites are like that though, with exception to Reddit where everyone pretty much uses profanity, even in the headlines.
Being that SU has a site sharing format, the places that are visited by each user is not private. That would defeat the purpose of sharing content. They do have groups for that particular subject however, and you can make friends there.
Great post. I have seen the “discovered by someone” before, but didn’t realize that’s what it meant.
How do I know if my site has been banned by stumbleupon? I havent received any emails or messages from them but after building up my account, i discovered a blog post from my site and had a couple friends like it. however when i look at my profile it still shows that there has been only one view even though it displays the people who liked it.
Is this normal/should i be worried/is there a way to discover if my site has been blacklisted? thanks!!
how often can a publisher submit content without being banned? i cant find this answer any where..does anybody know?