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!