Is Stumble Upon’s New Share Program a Good Thing or a Horrible Thing?

27 Comments / Blogging / By

First off, I want to speak my personal opinion loud and clear. This is horrible news for me. As an already active stumble user I have friends send me stuff they really want me to see. And by the very fact that SU makes it somewhat hard to send stuff to a lot of people… Well then, people only send me stuff they know I like…

I first heard about this new Share program at 3 Dog Media. Check out the currently 119 reviews on its SU page.

Normally a page that gets that many reviews will have 4 or 5 stars. Unless, it gets a lot of thumbs down. Well, that’s just what happened.

What is the general consensus of the reviews? THIS IS SPAM and I don’t like it! Read them for yourself.

I am curious though. What are YOUR thoughts?

I am going to send this through the SU Share program. It might be my one and only time I do it.

Why? I get enough feeds already. I don’t need more  stuff coming to my email. 30 new shares in a single day is just too much. Times that by another 30 and I am looking at 900 pages a month. Not to mention the stuff I already look at. Can you say insane?!

Will I miss out on some cool stuff? Probably.

Call my old school or whatever you want. I liked how SU worked before this new program. Normally I am very accepting of news things like this.

And maybe I will come to love it because it does make things easier…

But enough about my thoughts, what are yours?

Cheers,

Jeremy

27 thoughts on “Is Stumble Upon’s New Share Program a Good Thing or a Horrible Thing?”

  1. Michele

    Wow, I don’t know what to think. I’ll admit, sometimes it’s frustrating to send a great article to SU friends one person at a time; however, sometimes turtle pace is a good thing. The Internet already has us blazing the cyber highway at crazy speeds. Friend so-and-so, comment here, there, and everywhere, answer e-mails–oh wait, you have a gazillion new messages on Facebook, 20 new DMs on Twitter, 30 new e-mails while you blinked… It’s just crazy and sometimes it can be too much.

    I’m not sure this is a good thing. It’ll be quite disturbing to check the toolbar in the morning and discover 100 new things to look at. 🙁

    At least, for me, I can turn the ole laptop off and step out on the old-fashioned porch and breathe in the sweet serenity of an Amish farm, eh? (There’s always a bright side, after all.) 😉

    *smiles*
    Michele

    Michele’s last blog post..Raw Food, Raw People, Raw Contest!

  2. Craig

    I’m going to try and show restraint!

    Most of the stuff I really like or my own work I want to promote is in the travel niche. 80% of my SU friends are also travellers or travel writers and bloggers. I’m hoping this will cut down on the amount of spam I get.

    My strategy will be to send a warning message to people sending me low-quality or off-topic material. If they do it again, I’ll block them. Easy.

  4. Mike King

    I think this feature will lead to a need to set more preferences where you can setup the privacy settings in your profile. I know if I can’t control my own email inbox, I’ll start dropping lots of friends if they choose to bombard me with stuff just because SU made it easy. I personally like the toolbar shares, not email shares so I will ask people to share it that way with me.

    Mike King’s last blog post..The Burden of the Self

  5. Bunny got Blog

    OK- I am new to Stumble with in the last year. I love to read and have few blogs I follow BUT those blogs,I found on stumble and usually follow on Google Reader with the news.

    I am on Digg and twitter etc, but never utilize them.
    Mainly because I don’t have the time.

    I don’t know if I can honestly give you an accurate answer here.I have a hand full of friends on there and love to Stumble.

    Inform me please,Thumper is never on Stumble anymore.SOOO I am counting on you _
    Cheers

    Bunny got Blog’s last blog post..Listen To Your Gut, Part 2 – Alexandra Bellow

  7. Sid Savara

    I like it, but it is making me drop a lot of friends. I have cut about 20 in the past couple days. I plan to use it very sparingly, perhaps once a week or so – but even then, someone with hundreds of friends will get hundreds of these a week if everyone does it once a week.

  8. Seamus Anthony

    I reckon SU have covered themselves nicely because in order to use this new catch-all solution, you have to thumbs up the page you want to share (right? I think that’s right.) SO this means that if you keep thumbing up your own pages in order to use the send to all function, you’ll soon get penalized by SU and when you do you notice it, suddenly you can’t do stuff (like spam everyone). So for me, it’s still the same case of only sending around something good that I do here and there because to do otherwise would defeat the purpose. And God knows I am so happy not to have to send-stuff around one-by-one because that was less enjoyable than gouging my eyeballs out with a rusty blade.

  9. Chere

    Ok, the first time I heard about it was right now, when this came to my inbox—along with about 30 other emails from SU! NO! I don’t want this! Too much junk as it is!

    There’s my opinion..lol

    C

  11. Ian Peatey

    My initial reaction was ‘great’ that makes it much easier for me when I want to share stuff. But then I realised the share feature goes via Email and changed my mind to ‘bad, bad idea’. I like the SU toolbar sharing system, even though it’s a pain in the ass.

    I fear this has the potential to destroy SU and I imagine the feature will get withdrawn under mass pressure from SU users. On the other hand, maybe the spammers will hear our pleas and change their evil ways? Miracles can happen!

    Ian Peatey’s last blog post..Garbage dump of natural beauty

  12. LifeMadeGreat | Juliet

    Hi Jeremy

    Thanks for sharing this. In fact, it is just because you are you that I looked at this share 😉
    Now I know why I am suddenly getting all of these notices of people sharing stumbles with me.
    It hasn’t taken long and I’m already deleting them without reading.

    Some of the shares are completely irrelevant to me. It is spam. I may end up dropping a few friends.

    I have always been annoyed by the fact that one can only send to one friend at a time, but now that seems a blessing.

    Juliet

    LifeMadeGreat | Juliet’s last blog post..Fear Of No Change

  14. Matt Keegan

    I don’t like it although I’ve already blasted one link to everyone on my list and got huge results (blush). From this point on I plan on being much more selective, taking care to send the right message to the right person.

    It is easy to think that everyone will want to thumb up our work, but in reality that simply isn’t the case. BTW, the mailbox notification is a real drag too.

    Matt Keegan’s last blog post..Is Your Lazy PR Person Sabotaging Your Business?

  15. Vincent

    Hi Jeremy,

    I believe the share program can be either a good thing or a bad thing depending on the user. It helps when people are using it to share nice sites as it is convenient but if spammer use the share program instead, the share program can create a big headache for us.

    Cheers
    Vincent
    Personal Development Blogger

    Vincent’s last blog post..Are You Using The 80/20 Principle In Your Life?

  17. Jeremy Day

    Hi All,

    Thanks for taking the time to leave comments. Not only did I get 14 comments overnight I also got 20 more stumble sites in my stumble bar. I currently have 41 sites to visit in my stumble bar (some of them are probably just comments about this page). And I really can’t keep up.

    The general consensus is to remove friends who are spammy. I like Sid’s idea of maybe using the Share program once a week. But even then it could be a lot.

    I am going to continue monitoring how this affects me and wastes my precious time. I would love your continued feedback as well.

    And just so you know Im only going to use the Share program when I know for sure that it is an awesome article worth reading. Ill continue to send specific articles to specific people who I know will enjoy them through the toolbar.

    Cheers,
    Jeremy

  18. Kent @ The Financial Philosopher

    The paradox of choice… Information rich equals attention poor… I’ve never used StumbleUpon and I never will…

    “… in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” ~ Herbert Simon (1916 – 2001)

    Kent @ The Financial Philosopher’s last blog post..Finding Beauty in Ugliness

  22. timethief

    Do not need! Do not want! The ability to spam everyone on my friends list is NOT a desirable feature. twitter has become spammer and now stumbleupon is marching to the same drummer’s beat – oy vey! I’ am NOT happy.

  26. Benjamin Teo

    I completely hate it, but one thing I’ve done is noticed that it only goes to 99 new shared items thus I leave it at 99 so I don’t have to get anymore… That’s a new trick you can all do if you hate the new function. I honestly don’t have the time to go through 50 everyday, as that’s how many I get ever morning when I turn on my Firefox

    Benjamin Teo’s last blog post..12 Tips To Improve Your Digg Profile & Stats

  27. Kirschner

    I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.

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