Making Lemonade Out Of StumbleUpon
Table of contents for 9/Writing About Blogging
- Making Lemonade Out Of StumbleUpon
- NextGen Gallery
- NextGen Gallery/ ImageFlow/ NewsLink Briefs
- Middle Of The Week/ Lost In Richmond
A month or two ago I was having a problem because SU was starting to bug me. A problem arose and it went down something like this.
I went to Best Buy and asked the Geeky Guy at the repair counter about Vista 64-bit operating systems. He said all the computers with it on them came back through the front door because customers were unhappy. They were unhappy because their printers and other stuff wouldn’t work when they plugged them into their new computers.
Simple enough. If a bit odd. But those of us who have bought enough stuff at Best Buy or other computer stuff stores understand that not all of it works. So I wrote a post about it and it got reviewed by SU afficianados. The next thing that happened was my stat counter started going off like a pinball machine.
And I should have just left it at that. But some dude in Great Britain decided he didn’t like the post and he thumbed it down. This was my first experience with being thumbed down and I didn’t like it. I especially was not fond of the language he employed when he thumbed it. Because you are supposed to use your finger for that.
So I did something you should never never do in most circumstances and especially in a circumstance where SU is involved. I wrote to them and complained about this guy. Because you know what happened next. My new SU friend who has heard it all a million times looked at MY record. And he saw that I had several different user names. Why? Because when I began with SU I logged in fitfully. AND YOU CAN’T LOG IN ON THE FRONT PAGE. The login is located deep inside the tool bar. Take a look!
So when I came back after a week or two in the beginning to see if this SU stuff was really any good I couldn’t get in!! The only way to get in is to sign up again!
Perhaps this explains why there is a problem with folks having more than one account on SU. I don’t know. But I do know it explained my situation. In any case the staff SU person was more concerned with my dormant accounts than with anything else. Mr. Bollocks from the United Kingdom was not breaking any rules. And after that my post about Vista that had gathered over 5,000 views in a couple of days suddenly lost its audience.
What happened? I don’t know. But it was actually a good thing. Because it got me over my need for SU juice. I was addicted and didn’t know it. Since that time I have taken another look at my blog and introduced some new elements. I have also started a new blog after purchasing a new theme. It is called NewsLink Briefs and it will include hard hitting and snug fitting news. (I think that is funny but who knows?)
None of this would have happened if I had continued thinking about SU and their successful enterprise. It also struck me for the first time that they have a wonderful thing going. Because we are supplying them with the product they dispense to the world. We produce it and we refine it. In some strange sense we are all the employees of SU. And that’s great. Volunteerism is a wonderful thing. The problem happens when we are made to feel it is somehow immoral to use SU to help us grow our blogs. Bringing traffic to your blog while using SU is somehow a sin.
And I am happy that all of this is in the rear view mirror now. My stats are not messed up by SU blips any more. And I don’t have to worry about being an immoral SU user.
I still plan to use it to help other bloggers from time to time. But I have other things to do in terms of prime time activity. And maybe this is what SU wants. I don’t know. They were a mystery to me when I first started trying to log on to my new account and couldn’t find the login button.
And they are a mystery now.
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