Prepare for Stumbleupon 3.27 Beta
Unknowingly to most social media marketers, Stumbleupon is rolling out a fair number of changes that could affect user profiles, and their ’stumble power’. The beta has already rolled, and its only time before the finished release becomes available.
Prominent changes in this release include:
- Adds a thumbdown menu featuring the following options:
- Not-for-me ~ This doesn’t suit me.
- Stumbled this before ~ This content was in a previous stumble.
- Too much like this lately ~ Baby animals are nice, but that’s enough for now.
- Adds website blocking via the thumbdown menu for FF 3.x users.
- Fixes a bug in FF 3.x bookmark integration that could cause a tag to be applied upon rating thumbdown.
- Adds options to report a stumble as ‘Factually incorrect’ or ‘Unsafe’.
- Adds more convenient reporting of incorrect topic via an optional reporting menu. See the ‘Show topic as’ item on the Configuration tab of Toolbar Options.
- When topic is displayed as a menu (for reporting incorrect topic), other reporting items are located on this menu rather than on the Tools menu.
Implications of the Algorithm Change
Let’s evaluate what this change means in order of the updates for the new release:
Expanding the Thumb Down Menu
- Not For Me – This is the same as its always been and excludes stumbles by the tags and domain.
- Stumbled This Before – As a user I like this! I’ve seen a fair number of the same stumbles being rotated especially if the tag doesn’t have much content.
- Too Much of This Lately – Great for the user, but potentially a deterrent for viral marketing campaigns.
However, using ‘too much of this lately’ affects the stumbler’s user profile as stated by SU staff: “Using Too much like this lately’ will affect the aggregate reputation for the profile. Usually there’s something about the stumble that makes it the straw that broke the camel’s back. If you’re getting profiles too often when stumbling within ‘All’, it may be better to remove the Stumblers topic. Then, when you’re in the mood to see profiles, choose the Stumblers channel from the Channel Menu”
Website Blocking – Self explanatory. Either serve up decent content, or run the risk of never showing up for a stumbler again.
Factually Incorrect or Unsafe – This will become the new haven for stumble trolls, or folks who want to to engage in negative social media (much the same as negative SEO). Stumbleupon is working on this, but I can definitely see potential for it to be gamed.
Stumbleupon Takeaways
Overall, the change has been for the better, but it will be interesting to see how traffic levels and sharing of content changes as the new release is adopted by the entire SU user base. For marketers, this definitely means refraining from stumbling up those pesky proxy website stumble requests, and others that fit the ‘low quality’ bill. That’s just my 2 cents, but feel free to add your own in the comments!
You can download the beta or join in with your own questions and comments at the official stumbleupon thread.
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StumbleUpon is a bunch of blackmailing thieves! If you go popular on their site they will eventually e-mail you stating that people are helping to promote your site and it is against their TOS. So what do they do? They temporarily freeze your site from being indexed and request( code for demand/blackmail) you to become a sponsor. If you do not comply with a certain amount of days( normally 8-10) Your site will be permanently removed and when someone tries to stumble your page, it will state that that site/user has been removed from spam.
So go us Stumble all you want but myself & many other bloggers refuse to allow those blackmailing thieves to get their grips on us &take any chance ruining our Google accounts. On top of all that if you receive too many visits without them clicking your Adsense ads( no stumblers ever do) you will be banned from Google adsense for impression fraud. Once Google and your site has a conflict like that, boy your index, ads and search are screwed. It is happening quite often lately, so be extra careful because you can be next!
Go check with Google and the web and see for yourself before you become their next victim. Plans are in development to make sure what goes around comes around!
@James I’m not trying to imply that your claims aren’t right, but would like to ask if you’ve got proof of this happening. I’m actively involved with the social media marketing community, and I haven’t heard of any such incidents so far, especially the part about being a sponsor.
StumbleGenius Stumbling on thru, StumbleUpon thumbs up to you, hope to see you in more clicky stumble trips soon. Happy day merry seasons greetings an all that jazz.
Read you later or tweet me on Twitter @StumbleGenius … tweet you soon ???
@ james
Its been almost 2 year that i have been stumbling and i know how SU works they will never aks you to be a sponsor until unless you tried putting your email id in the newsletter or u might have clicked there sponsor link.
But the blackmailing part can not be true according to me.