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Stumbleupon is great. I cannot say that I have ‘met’ many people on stumbleup0n, but I have connected with people I met on other social networks. I learn alot about them through the types of stumbles they stumble. Stumblers are for the most part GREAT people.

That being said – let me give you a warning. Do you remember the DIGG fiasco of a few months ago? All of a sudden what seemed like hundreds of diggers were suddenly history – and the message they got: you are SUSPECTED of using a script to digg. OK – some newbees got canned too because they used the script advertised by a popular digger figuring it was OK since it was built on the digg API which was open to anyone. This popular digger did not intend to cause harm to other diggers, he thought he was helping them.

Further than the fact that DIGG suspended accounts due to SUSPECTED use, they also did not give anyone a change to redeam themselves. They did not give second chances, and did not listen if one said they were innocent. The axe fell.

I have heard that some of the DIGG management have moved into Stumbleupon. I do not know if it is true. But suddently in the past month, SU accounts have been put under review – which is the same as suspending them – for stumbling (discovering) their own work! It doesn’t matter if the site or post is worthy of a stumble, what matters is if the author discovered it.

What is the effect of this? Well – don’t discover your own posts. Don’t use the SU toolbar to share your discoveries with anyone. In fact, use the SU share very minimally, if at all. If you are in a social network forum, share your SU user names, but don’t share SU stumbles. And NEVER NEVER suggest discovering someone else’s post or site or photo, especially in exchange for them discovering one of yours.

One other NO NO. Don’t thumbs down anyone or report them if you want to stay on SU. It is way to easy for them and their friends to launch an attach on you and get you banned.

Where does that leave stumblers who want to not only enjoy SU, but also contribute? It leaves you in an underground situation. You can either put a notice on your site or blog begging someone to discover you, or you can get into a private email communication with other bloggers to ask them to stumble your works.

This leaves me in a quandary. I love Stumble Upon and I also love contributing to SU. Neither of these options above sound good to me. What do you think? And be careful. Big Brother may be monitoring.