I hate Stumble Upon

Time to remove the Stumble Upon Toolbar from my browser.

Do you Stumble? If so, stop.

If you do not, don't start.

Why?

If you Stumble yourself, you can get your account suspended.

Here is the deal that drives me crazy about some of these companies out there.

Google, Stumble, Delicious, all of them depend upon two things:

Members and Content.

Without either, they become irrelevant and die.

Why bother with any social network or Web 2.0 application if it has no content?

Why bother "Stumbling" if there are no pages to Stumble Upon?

Members provide content for Stumble. If they don't, there will be no content. Stumble becomes worthless.

Sure, there are some people who treat the internet as television. They "channel surf" and look at different websites and read blogs.

Sure, some stumble a page and collect lots of stumbled pages.

These people enjoy observing and commenting on things they find on the internet. Sure, I guess that is a needed hobby and is reminiscent of 1995 when the Internet was new to so many consumers.

But it is 2009. I write original content as do millions of others. I provide this content to different social networks and Web 2.0 sites who then spread it to their members.

These same social networks use advertising revenue to make money. Without my content, which I provided free of charge, they would make less advertising money.

Rather than be thankful for the contributions of members, administrators for different social networks still think it is 1995. That all members are "spammers" who need to be "spanked" and corralled into providing providing free content or have their accounts revoked.

Sure, it stinks when a social network is nothing more than blinky ads and Vigra offers, but that can be controlled by maintaining channels for submissions which are appropriate for members to submit to.

However, revoking accounts and banning users for submitting original content which other members fine useful is wrong.

I hate Stumble Upon. I am sure if they disabled my account, the membership Nazi's must be on a roll and shutting down other accounts as well. Maybe yours. It stinks because I provided them free content which they used to make money.