Welcome fellow Stumblers. I’m sure most of you are well aware of this latest sensation to sweep the web. What started out as an ill conceived viral marketing campaign, by the web design firm uP’n’@tom, has quickly morphed into an all out spam attack on the StumbleUpon Community.
The problem with uP’n’@tom’s stumble cards is that they lack creativity and are extremely easy to duplicate. Spammers have quickly made their own stumble cards to drive traffic to their sites serving advertising. This is degrading the user experience of StumbleUpon. Another problem is that ad-driven blogs, like Cult Press, are jumping on board and posting collections of stumble cards to drive stumble traffic to their blog posts that are loaded with ads.
The biggest problem fueling the stumble card pandemic is the collection of stumblers who thumb up the cards. If the majority of StumbleUpon users, who dislike the cards, can get the word out that these cards are nothing more than spam, then maybe fewer and fewer people will thumb them up. Over time these spammers will see less and less traffic coming to their stumble card pages and it will not be worth their time to create new ones. As long as people keep thumbing up the cards, the more of them we will see on StumbleUpon.
So my question to the StumbleUpon community is this: what do you think the SU community should do to address this problem?
Hi~
I usualy thumb down blog post who complains about stumble cards.
I won’t thumb down this one ’cause it’s nicely write and you don’t have ads on your blog.
This buzz is great. And as every buzz it will die soon.
I think you (I mean all haters) are jealous. It takes month to get a good rank and stumble cards did it very quick. That’s all.
Thumb up for your clear post with links.
Keep going.
Regards
Maybe it’s just me, but I left my “gotta catch ’em all” trait in high school along with M:TG and Pokemon. I mainly use SU to find site that are actually relevant to my interests, not some new “fad.” Stumble Cards go against that and have made SU less useful to me.
I have to agree with the original post and disagree with Brices comment. I too find them very annoying. I am positive that’s its nothing to do with jealousy, more possibly it’s to do with the fact they are so pointless, there are tons of random ones and its just an advertising campaign. I thumb them all down and I do hope stumble built in a spam feature where certain members can facilitate the modding of content. For example, if enough people deemed a stumble page to be advertising rubbish then it will be flagged for a moderator to verify this and remove or give the stamp of approval. I see no problem with sites having ad’s, in most cases its an honest but often misguided attempt to make some extra cash without being to serious. Even my own blog has them.
But that’s my two bits.
TomTom
@ brice dekany
Thanks for the complement on my writing.
I’m not jealous of uPn@tom at all. Overall I feel they have gained a very bad reputation within the StumbleUpon community. Plus it’s not a clever piece of viral marketing at all since it is so easy to duplicate.
Maybe I would be jealous of them if they had created something unique, difficult to duplicate, and that was well received in the community b/c it actually brought value to the community. Stumblecards fail on all three counts.
I hope you are right and the buzz about stumblecards does die. The sooner the better.
Hey, I just want to say that my site Cult Press posted these items not knowing anything about them other than thinking the idea of trading viral ideas and designs was quite unique.
You put my site down as ad based blogs, yes my blog has adverts but i can just let you know that i do it as a hobby and have made under $10 in 2 years of running the site, so there is no financial gain to have. I just love keeping an Entertainment news blog.
Sorry you feel so strongly about it, just thumb it down and keep clicking.
But i agree, well written blog.
Mike
Thumbs up…and probably a mention in my next blog post.
Thanks for the post!
Keith
With the purpose of answering your question “What should we do?” I say this: increase awareness. StumbleUpon itself should take action to notify new and old users about the “trading cards” as spam. When I was brand new, I thumbed up a few of these cards because I didn’t know what they were, and wanted to save them in case you got some special prize for finding specific ones.
At the very least, stumbleupon should suggest that new users read this post to educate themselves.
Great post, thanks for sharing!
Reading the comments here, I don’t believe anyone has a grasp on the true intentions behind stumblecards. Sure there are many crappy copycats spamming the SU system but I have been to up’n’@tom’s site and it’s just an innocent game. The cards on the site are not the ones I’ve seen everyone thumbing down. Up’n’@tom actually says users should not thumb them up or down. That the idea of the game is to hoard the cards until people start looking for the rare ones to complete their collections. That’s if anyone is actually collecting them?
If anyone is interested… there is an interview with the creator at http://www.e3internet.com/greenhouse/nick/13/02/2008/interview-stumblecard-creator-adam/
cheers
You can actually do that be awarded a stumbleuopn card that us fake and is created by the spammer and he gets all the traffic. Has anyone from the stumleupon ebay management put a stop to this. This is a resourceful post.
I’ve only seen one stumble card. It was kinda gay so I ignored it. I don’t see the point in them.
You ppl are bad. stumble cards are great and i personaly love them, they dont hinder stumble upon at all and are a cool little thing to find when im borid.
I hate when I get too “borid”.
i am a frequent stumbler and i must say that i loathe these cards. i like stumble upon because i come across some interesting information at times, not to find cards or worse yet… become a “top stumbler”, lol. just leave it alone, it was fine the way it was. swhats next… stumbler of the month?
The people who like Stumble Cards are blogwhoring SEO freaks.
I have a sense that the average SU user finds them annoying, pointless, and a waste of a stumble. Maybe the first time I saw one, I was like, “Hmm… never saw one of those before…”. Now, I want to stab my eyes out with a lobster fork. A lobster fork!
I mark them all as spam, and I recommend everyone else do the same. They are nearly as annoying as ani-gif ads.
Stumble cards are rather boring. Thumbs down.
You’re so right. The four seconds that it takes for me to see that I’ve hit a stumble card and hit my stumble button again are irreplacable. In fact, with how many I’ve seen, there are probably four entire minutes of my life that I will never get back. Something needs to be done.
I like ’em. I think that they are fun. I even liked the one that said that they suck.
I use SU for when I am bored and so does everyone else that I know. To use StumbleUpon for something other than wasting time to find a cheap amusement seems kinda pointless, given the amount of random stuff that you get while using it.
If they bother you that much, thumbs down them and move on. Obviously some of us DO like them, or they wouldn’t have gotten as popular as they did.
My, oh, my! Well, thumbs down naturally. I’ve only had the pleasure to thumbs down 3 so far but plan on continuing every chance I get!
Peace………….
I have only seen 3 or 4 of them and I dont get it really. but dont think that its a big problem, people will get bored of it and stop thumbing up or down and just hit stumble again. All of these “collect them all” things are just fads that never last. But I am sure that this discussion will bring plenty of traffic here 😉 Are you too jumping on the stumblecard bandwagon?
stumblecards are fucking annoying. They serve no purpose. I give them all the thumbs down i have.
I couldn’t agree more. I might have to stop using stumble.