What's the point of pay-per-community building? If marketers take short cuts instead of really interacting with, engaging, and caring about the communities they hope to reach, eventually cool social networking tools like Stumble Upon will become the new spam. It's been happening with Squidoo. Seeing community building as a media buy is a quick fix for a thoughtless campaign.
EJRaven
· 2 years ago
So much for Semantic internet Web 3.0, at this rate it will be more like Infomercial pay-per-post-blog-digg-stumble-mash-wiki-read-everything pay internet.
When is Mashable going to start paying us for reading it? I hope it never comes to this point, ethical values are more important than a crooked marketing campaign.
EJRaven
· 2 years ago
I just stopped using StumpleUpon, I hope other people followed suit in response to this type of abuse and marketing fiasco.
Patrick Altoft
· 2 years ago
Why stop using stumbleupon? It's not their fault some people try to game the system.
The best way to stop this sort of thing is for everybody to vote the thumbs down button when you stumble upon content you don't like.
Clement
· 2 years ago
Patric, I agree with you entirely on your second point.Vote thumbs down for all content that you do not like.
geoff
· 2 years ago
Ugh. It is hard enough to promote my show without fighting off a horde of "I discovered the secret click here to lose weight and refinance your penis enlargement" sites... Sometimes, I really do think the internet peaked with the badger badger video.
Shame. At least now I know not to waste more time at SU.
Matt Siltala
· 2 years ago
Stop using SU? Yea, thats gonna work just like it worked with Digg.
Sephyroth
· 2 years ago
At least the name of the company is appropriate for what they're doing. It's not going to stop me from using stumbleupon anymore, however.
Woeful
· 2 years ago
Sadly, paying people to Stumble is going to pollute the site. Shunning SU isn't the answer, since this isn't their fault, and it hurts them too. This sucks because StumbleUpon is one of my favorite online services.
Ragnar Danneskjold
· 2 years ago
You guys do know that StumbleUpon already sells "stumbling traffic" to advertisers, right?
I just see ourselves as a competitor in the same market.
- Ragnar, founder
Sean Mulholland
· 2 years ago
StumbleUpon sells an impression - i.e. they allow you to put your site in front of the public. They don't sell the 'thumbs-up'...
mark
· 2 years ago
Wow, you're just gonna ruin the service.
Sean Mulholland
· 2 years ago
While this type of stuff is immoral, it's not necessarily illegal (at least in the Digg/SU/Web2.0 sense). Any system that relies on people automatically exposes itself to those who would game the system, even going as far as democratic government. I grew up in Chicago, and confirmed stories of the mob essentially deciding mayoral races come to mind...
Of course any Web2.0 company that tries to put in voting regulation on the level of most governments would essentially be declaring bankruptcy.
The only real way to combat it is to fight fire with fire, i.e. use the semantic power of tagging something as 'SPAM' to help the machines sort the "v!agr^A" from the legitimate sites. By no longer using StumbleUpon you essentially surrender to the spammers since it will be decades until an algo can learn to consistently defeat a network of humans.
EJRaven
· 2 years ago
After reading your comenet Sean, MySpace came to mind. MySpace is the perfect example of a community based society in which spammers have prevailed and the user experience diminished exponentially.
For example, I just logged on to my Myspace account, I had a total of 53 friend invitations, only 7 of them were legitimate friend requests, the others were spammers, this fact makes the user experience annoying. Stumble Upon is heading the same path.
PC
· 2 years ago
Bravo for not linking to them.
duke4life
· 2 years ago
Hey guys, sorry for this naive question but do you know what caused the demise of spikethevote.com? If I remember correctly, they did a similar "service" but the site no longer functions.
Rose
· 2 years ago
Wow this really sucks as I like StumbleUpon.
Niko Bellic
· 2 years ago
Yea right as if they're actually going to pay.
Crystal
· 2 years ago
I really hope this doesn't happen. I love Stumble Upon. This could make it completely useless. I hope they try to sue them
Bobby Anon
· 2 years ago
Almost every web2 site has been seeded in some way. While its not quite honest, traffic is traffic and it builds sites up though $1/digg is extremely expensive.
All Comments
When is Mashable going to start paying us for reading it? I hope it never comes to this point, ethical values are more important than a crooked marketing campaign.
The best way to stop this sort of thing is for everybody to vote the thumbs down button when you stumble upon content you don't like.
Shame. At least now I know not to waste more time at SU.
I just see ourselves as a competitor in the same market.
- Ragnar, founder
Of course any Web2.0 company that tries to put in voting regulation on the level of most governments would essentially be declaring bankruptcy.
The only real way to combat it is to fight fire with fire, i.e. use the semantic power of tagging something as 'SPAM' to help the machines sort the "v!agr^A" from the legitimate sites. By no longer using StumbleUpon you essentially surrender to the spammers since it will be decades until an algo can learn to consistently defeat a network of humans.
For example, I just logged on to my Myspace account, I had a total of 53 friend invitations, only 7 of them were legitimate friend requests, the others were spammers, this fact makes the user experience annoying. Stumble Upon is heading the same path.
Bobby Anon
http://www.rumory.com
The Internets Rumor Mill
Zomg, are you honestly surprised about that? What else did you expect?
"Thumbs down" are no solution, how could they? You can use them the same way: getting paid for voting down.