Perhaps you some enjoy pages you find on StumbleUpon but a lot of the results aren’t relevant? Maybe many of your finds are relevant but you want more people to share them with? Or maybe you just love StumbleUpon, have some people you know using it, but want to find even more? If any of these rings true perhaps you could use some better methods of finding ‘friends’ on SU.

While many StumbleUpon users merrily Stumble away without interacting with others, a fair number of people join StumbleUpon in part because they want to network with others in the community. Whether you want to find people with similar interests or simply want to find more interesting things to StumbleUpon it is worthwhile for every Stumbler to make Stumble-friends.

A good first step is to be sure you have ‘Stumblers’ selected as a StumbleUpon interest. That way in the course of your normal Stumbling you will come across other users. You can choose to either add these users as friends or simply Stumble on. To add this category go to your StumbleUpon page (username.stumbleupon.com), select ‘preferences’ then ‘Stumbling’ then ‘Update Your Topics’ then ‘Society’ and check the ‘Stumblers’ box.

Another great way to find and friend Stumblers is by clicking the bubble dialog box on pages you like (the cartoon talk bubble you see next to your ‘I like it’ thumbs up and thumbs down buttons). See who discovered the page and/or who left interesting and positive comments on it. Then go to that person’s Stumble-page and see what common interests you share.

For those who use various social media sites: be sure to check friends’ profiles in places like Digg and Pownce to see if they list their StumbleUpon social media profile. For some people, they may have the same username across multiple sites. Other users may have a variant so simply checking username.stumbleupon.com may not be enough to find them!

If a person has more than 200 friends (the limit on StumbleUpon) you may wish to ping them and ask if they would be interested in adding you back – otherwise you could decide you’d rather wait for someone who will be a mutual friend. Some Stumblers who regularly find or rate interesting things may be worth adding regardless of whether they ‘friend’ you back.

Don’t worry about networking on StumbleUpon all at once. Usually these things happen over time and some people will become inactive over time as well, buying you more free ‘space’ in your friends network to add new people as you encounter them. Maybe you know of some better ways than those listed here to find people, places and things on StumbleUpon – if so feel free to share below!

StumbleUpon is arguably the ultimate social media network. It is easy to use: jumping from page to interesting page takes just a click of a button. It is diverse: unlike Digg and Reddit, StumbleUpon isn’t dominated by a few niche interest groups or a limited demographic. It is incredibly friendly: there is very little trash-talk on SU as compared to other social media sites. However, StumbleUpon does have one major shortcoming: it is somewhat difficult to move from the status of ‘casual Stumbler’ to ‘StumbleUpon expert’ because SU has hidden complexity beyond the Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down and Stumble buttons we know and love.

A number of people have compiled lists over time emphasizing different aspects of StumbleUpon for different kinds of users. These are, fortunately or unfortunately, quite diverse. Instead of compiling a list oriented toward a single type of Stumbler or subset of Stumblers I took the liberty of compiling these lists into a metalist. Finding these took longer than I expected. In the process I found some links I learned from, some I skipped over, but instead of subjectively selecting my own favorites I will simply describe the links and leave the rest up to you. Without further ado, here are 5 of the top StumbleUpon resource lists. Enjoy!

The Definitive StumbleUpon Resource List is a pretty good place to start off. It is conveniently organized by category for various kinds of Stumblers with different interests. The list starts with Stumbling Basics and Veteran Stumblers, then moves on to discuss ways to drive traffic via StumbleUpon, become a power Stumbler, advertising on StumbleUpon and closes with a list of additional tools to enhance one’s Stumbling experience.

These 34 StumbleUpon Posts that Aren’t Crap for the most part do live up to the title. Better yet, they are also well organized: starting with introductory and beginner StumbleUpon links through blogging with StumbleUpon in mind and finally some humorous Stumble-related posts that aren’t really about using SU, simply poking fun at aspects of StumbleUpon and so on.

The Top 5 Resources for Stumblers Outside StumbleUpon has a good scope within the context of being a short list of links. These links include a blog about how to use StumbleUpon, another one dedicated to interesting things found on StumbleUpon and sites for finding useful addons for SU as well as alternative ways to search SU. In short: this is a brief but powerful list of StumbleUpon resources.

StumbleUpon Tools to Stumble Around the Web is, as it suggests, a tightly focused list that is dedicated to tools that enhance one’s experiencing using StumbleUpon. Some of these are for people who own blogs or websites and want to integrate SU voting more directly into their sites, and othersare oriented toward the Stumbler and allow new, different and/or faster ways to use StumbleUpon.

The so-called Ultimate StumbleUpon Resource List is perhaps somewhat misleadingly labeled. While the list does contain a variety of resources most of these are oriented toward people who want to become influential on StumbleUpon and/or send lots of traffic to their own sites for fun or for profit. I would not recommend most of the links provided here for the casual Stumbler or the Stumbler looking to find more interesting things and network for the sake of friendship and other personal reasons.

Note on the above strikethrough: a reader kindly pointed out that some of the resources on that list are quite black-hat. As such I plan to find a fifth list with the strikethrough as a replacement until that happens – I have no interest in referring people to poor sources. Any suggestions or recommendations?

Now, if you are here and you are a Stumbler, I’m not going to insult your intelligence and experience by asking you to Stumble this page. That’s the beauty of StumbleUpon – we can all choose to vote up, vote down or simply Stumble (Up)on. I hope you enjoyed this list of lists and that you found at least one resource worth your while!

I guess they’re afraid to voice their opinions beyond their little clique of mutually-supportive morons. Likewise, the person who started this flame war has accused me of all sorts of funny and ridiculous things. What I think that they don’t understand is: this is a site dedicated to things that suck – if no one trashed it, I’d be highly disappointed! Anyway, thanks crazy Stumblers for the unasked for attention – it doesn’t go unnoticed or unappreciated.

Keep it coming!

UPDATE: One of the idiots messaged me saying that they had made a comment on Allsux. Now OK, I can see trying to fool their moronic friends, but hi: I moderate the comments on here, I think I’d know if someone had tried to make one! They also tried to make fun of me for ‘checking the forums’ to find their link. Are these guys computarded or what? Hi, look at the sidebar: see those fancy favicons? Those show where visitors are coming from. These guys should ‘check’ their heads. This isn’t rocket science.

UPDATE: Just when I think these guys can’t get any funnier, I get this mesages back: “However you found the forum it clearly shows you had the initiative to go and look at the link.” They then used this as the basis for an argument that I was lame for spending so much time finding/reading the forum post about this site. OK, here’s what’s funny to me about this: with the Romlet widget on the sidebar, it takes exactly one click to see an incoming source of traffic. That is exactly the same number of clicks that it takes this idiot to open their inbox each time I send them a message. What’s more: this person keeps coming back to Allsux to check for new posts about them or StumbleUpon. Let’s review: someone who is actively looking for my posts about them is criticizing me for clicking one link to a post they made about me? Whee this is fun!

So fine. Some people don’t like this, and that’s cool. Some think it’s apt and funny, and that’s great. Some people think it sucks, and review it negatively. All fine. So here’s what I don’t get: someone who doesn’t blog anything of their own, just reviews people’s work and rates it on SU, goes out of their way to personally trash the author on their blog:

Anyway, I’m thick-skinned – I can take it. But there are people of all ages and backgrounds using SU, and some might really take things like this to heart. Feel free to negatively review this, trash me, etc…, but just remember to ask yourself: why am I on StumbleUpon? Is it to rampantly trash people or to find cool stuff? If you don’t like something, why not just Stumble on? In this case I’ll make one tiny exception.

UPDATE: So DLAF has responded with something I never expected:

OK, now, I think you could make an (albeit difficult) argument that implying someone is “furiously masturbating” to something they wrote which is “fucking obvious” is not personal. I think, however, you’ll have a pretty tough time claiming that calling someone a “dickcunt” and particularly an “utter utter (etc…) cunt” isn’t personally insulting. As I said: fine, I can take it. But for crying out loud: own up to the fact that you’re trashing people and not just their pages, and think about the fact that others might have teeth and bite back (like me) or might be genuinely hurt or insulted.

SECOND UPDATE: I responded to DLAF and not the number of friends she sent to thumb this down and leave harassing messages – I am not interested in wasting time on some flame war. As a result of the fact that I only responded to her, she has decided that I am a racist woman-hater – which are rather humorous things to accuse a raging liberal of. Meanwhile, she appears unwilling to either write back to me directly or stop this – so I’m putting a stop to it right now. Thanks for the laughs, DLAF, your hypocrisy has been entertaining – I just hope you don’t step on the wrong person’s toes. Oh, and feel free to thumb this down if you want StumbleUpon to become Myspace.

How did I find this person? Well, ‘Poohbaby‘ (what the heck does THAT mean?) messaged me as shown below. My inbox on SU is remarkably spam free, and I hope this isn’t the beginning of a trend.

In point of fact, StumbleUpon does not suck at all. It is a great tool both for meeting interesting people and for finding amazingly interesting websites. Frankly, I have discovered more interesting graphic design, political commentary and other off-beat sites through StumbleUpon than through many other sucky social news, networking and bookmarking sites.

Why should you believe me? Well, they don’t pay me to say this, so that’s a start. Just download the toolbar and try it yourself. Set some random keywords about stuff you like and come back here and tell me you don’t like it! If you DO like it you might want to link back to this post so it outranks that other one.

Next I need to thank some of the many great bloggers I’ve ‘met’ online since starting this site. Shane of WallStreetFighter continues to entertain me with his humorous posts and humored me by posting a story for me on his site some time ago – he was also one of the first bloggers to put me on his blogroll! Ilker of TheThinkingBlog has been helpful in terms of giving me advice and feedback (some of which I’m planning to apply to my new blog). Halil of Peoplized has been fun to talk with (and someone I can write in German to!) and Peopleized has just successfully launched. The list goes on but I’d like to also point out Eric Berlin’s blog, Bob Meets World and Modern Life.

I’ve used Digg, Reddit, Delicious, StumbleUpon and other bookmarketing/networking sites – and gotten some traffic that way. However, MyBlogLog has helped me develop lasting connections to other bloggers and blogs much more effectively. So, MyBlogLog has been a great resource allowing me to find other cool bloggers. Also, Eric (founder of MyBlogLog)Â took the time to come here twice and even leave a comment on the site – talk about personalized service. Thanks again Eric!

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 Are you ready to StumbleUpon and be Stumbled Upon?
(1) If you like this site, stumble allsux.com - not the subpage this post is on!
(2) Leave me a comment with your StumbleUpon name
(3) I will Stumble your page if I find it worthy of Stumblage
(4) If not, no harm done. I’ll let you know you can UnStumble me
(5) Copy this post and paste it on your blog – remove any blogs you don’t like personally from the list, and add new blogs you do like. Stumble them! As word spreads, more people will have a chance to Stumble your blog (and mine!) if they like them ;)

You should Stumble these sites:

Original Stumbles:
Satirical and bizarre: AllSux
The entertaining WallStreetFighter
Insightful and fun, TheThinkingBlog
The story of BobMeetsWorld
Thouhts from an OnlineMediaCultist

My New Stumbles:
The best of TheWrongAdvices
Tips from a Blog About Money
Get Peopleized
Worship TheCultofBlog
The blog of JulieAnneBonner.com

Site submission format: http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http://www.yourBLOG.com or simply use the Stumble toolbar cartoon speech-bubble when on the site in question! Also: be sure to leave an informative review and/or tags as these will help other Stumblers find sites of interest to them.

PLEASE NOTE: this is not a StumbleExchange type system. Bloggers on this list and I are interested in meeting cool Stumblers with neat sites, not building traffic for poor pages! Exchanging Stumbles blindly compromises the quality of StumbleUpon and violates their Terms of Service. Happy Stumbling!