Informed Networker Blog

Update: I received my first reply from StumbleUpon via email at 12:41 p.m., around 10 hours after I had made the initial post. The issue was resolved by 5:40 p.m. on the same day. Apparently it was an issue on StumbleUpon’s part though I don’t quite understand what. The fact that there was an issue isn’t what concerned me, it was the lack of communication. Aaron, the guy who contacted me in regard to my issues was very kind and polite and moved quickly to resolve it. He didn’t know exactly where the disconnect was in the whole communication area, but has moved quickly to resolve it now - so I’m happy.

I love StumbleUpon. For those who don’t know what StumbleUpon is, its a social network of types - and an extraordinary time consumer. Essentially it allows you to define a number of topics that interest you and then stumble through websites that people have tagged with those terms. You vote a thumbs up or thumbs down on each site and can tag the sites with your own keywords. Over time StumbleUpon refines what sites it shows you based on how you vote.

I’ve been using StumbleUpon for quite some time now - long enough that I’ve stumbled across 8,000+ pages and 100+ videos. I tell everybody about StumbleUpon - because its a great service.

Recently I launched a new website, in fact its this one. InformedNetworker is a social news media site for Information Technology Professionals. Similar to Digg(tm) but focused on professional computing interests rather than the (seemingly) ever more consumer oriented Digg(tm).

I decided as part of the marketing campaign for this new site to promote my site on StumbleUpon using their StumbleAds program. Essentially, this program allows you to pay for each visitor - at the cost of $0.05 per visitor. Not a bad price, especially since these visitors are hitting you based upon tags you define. I plopped down $25.00 and opened an account on 8/30/07. I created my first campaign - targeted for the tag it and pointing towards my informednetworker site. Over the next several days nothing happened. I guess I was in a manual approval stage. Once the approval stage had passed the money began disappearing from my account till I reach $0.00. What was strange was that I wasn’t receiving any hits as my money disappeared - or at least the control panel didn’t (and still doesn’t) reflect any. So what happened? My money is gone and I didn’t receive any hits.

Okay, I’m a reasonable guy. So I sent an email to StumbleUpon on 9/4/07, 9/12/07, and 9/22/07 - none of which have received anything more than the form response informing me that the response had been received. Furthermore, I posted in both the StumbleUpon general help forum and in the ads forum - no replies from any officials there either.

So, here I am - nearly a month later and I haven’t received any clicks for the $25.00 that magically vanished. I’m frustrated. If I received even a one line email saying, “Sorry we are busy. But don’t worry we are working on it.” I would wait and wait…But right now I am a voice crying out in distress and they aren’t even acknowledging my existence.

Final step? Write a blog post about it and submit it to several social networks, including StumbleUpon in hopes that someone at StumbleUpon will find that CSR with an ignored email in their inbox and give me a response - any response that can resolve this issue and let me continue my intoxication with StumbleUpon.

Facebook is all the rage. Many would argue that it has become a hotter property than MySpace. It has become a must for new application developers looking for instant fame and glory and many are writing articles about the utilization of Facebook not only for personal communications but also for business use (see Ricardo Sueiras, JP Rangaswami, Gordon Cook).

Still, I’m not sure that Facebook is ready for business use. Take for example Jason Calacanis who recently admitted Facebook bankruptcy because of the overwhelming amount of data streaming in from the massive number of friends he has. Now, I must admit I am not such a personage as is overwhelmed - currently most of my friends are either family members or real life associates (excluding Calacanis) - but someday this may change. In that instance I will become one amongst many who are attempting to keep in contact on several separate levels:

• Friends & Family - Those we know and love on a personal level.
• Close Business Associates - Individuals we regularly network with for business concerns. Partners, VARs, employees.
• Business Card Associates - Individuals who in the old days we would have exchanged business cards with. We don’t have a significant relationship with them, but do want to keep the line open, knowing we might be able to utilize each other in a mutually beneficial way in the future.

Thus a dilemma arises. Facebook offers a way to rubbing shoulders with those whom we might not have had any opportunity to interact with in normal, every day life but on the other hand can result in an overwhelming amount of data continually being poured down our throats. Solution?

Facebook needs to allow its members to segment their friends into various groupings - not just geographic or interest based, but relationship level. On my News Feed I should be able to create multiple tabs noting any delineations I like such as “close friends”, “business associates”, “other”, etc. The same applies to my status updates and other posts. Do I really want my business associates to see pictures of my cat Fluffy? Me bare-chested on the beach? Do I want them to know details about my personal life? On the other hand, do my friends care that I spent more time reading about XML, XSS, or NAS than talking about cars, movies, or home improvements?

By implementing these two features Facebook would allow me to segment data in such a way as allows me to focus on the people I want to interact with most regularly while not undermining the “exchange a business card” effect of Facebook. Would these changes make Facebook a better business social networking tool for you?