I’ve been banned from StumbleUpon – not banned but put under review – the fact is, I can’t use it any more. I’ve been stumbling for a year, found great friends there and now I feel as if huge part of my life has been taken away. Anyway, putting the emotional part aside, this got me thinking: was I really manipulating the service?
The honest and painful answer would be: YES. I did thumb up the content I was related to in some way or other. I did shared it with some of my friends. I did ask others to promote my stuff.
But what is more important is that I drove more value to the community than I got from it. And I can honestly and open-heartedly state that I was a great stumbler! I rated and reviewed content daily – a lot of content. Many people contacted me saying how great my StumbleUpon blog was.
So did I really deserve the ban? In his recent interview Muhammad Saleem said reciprocal voting is a natural part of social media where people having common interests share content and vote for it.
Lisa Barone recently said marketers were to blame for any negative outcome social media manipulating can have. Follow the rules and you will be OK, she said.
So where in their rules do they forbid to review your own content? Or sharing it with those who liked it?
I had about 1000 friends there and I am sure none of them could accuse me of spamming them or sending them some promotional content.
So where is the line between being a power user and manipulating the network?
Image by helmet13
