Using StumbleUpon’s Ghost Submission To Harm Your Competitors
I thought I had recently run across a unique glitchz in StumbleUpon that could really harm the traffic you receive from your submissions. Thinking my theory was somewhat outlandish after talking to a on-line friend on Gtalk I decided it was best to take it to a person who knew a lot more about how the StumbleUpon algorithym works than myself : Tim Nash!
In my somewhat excited state I pinged Tim and stated that there is a process that I had termed as ‘Ghost Submissions’ that could negatetively kill your traffic no matter how many thumbs-up or reviews you would receive. Tim in his polite manner, kindly pointed myself to one his earlier posts – StumbleUpon Graveyard.
Tim informed myself that this behaviour had been covered by that great online search commentator Andy Beard as well. So, I’d thought I might as well regurgitate the information (although, perhaps Lyndoman might suss what I’m doing here, perhaps not!)
The set-up is easy. The outcome is awful. To kill, yes strong words but that is exactly what happens, your competitors StumbleUpon traffic all that is required is a dodgy account and a few (one will do) friends. Heck you could build both and hide your dirty trail via a proxy. Then, wait until your competitor has submitted their latest offering, click the ‘Send To’ icon in your SU Toolbar and select your zombie friend. The site will show as being stumbled as a Ghost Submission (it has no member associated as a valid vote on the right-hand side of the submission page) and will struggle to gain much traction within StumbleUpon and thus no real traffic.
My own thoughts is this is StumbleUpon’s own self-defence mechanism to help protect itself from those looking to self-promote. But with about 10 minutes sign-up time, a vigilant eye on your competitors contributions, you could easily kill their site within StumbleUpon.
Counteraction possibilities include pinging friends prior to submission and letting them know exactly when your post is going live to get a proper, if not natural selection vote.
Ghost submissions in StumbleUpon are devestating when you have tasted the power of tens-of-thousands of people visiting your site from SU and also the natural links that feed and point to your content that this garners. Then, suddenly, to feel the reverse of that wave of SU traffic and have your content killed by a ghost submission in SU is frightening to say the least.
Andy Beard said,
Wrote on June 17, 2008 @ 10:13 am
The same can be achieved with other social media sites such as Digg.
With SU what can also happen is someone submits a review, and then changes their vote to a thumb down.
The worst aspect of the graveyard effect is that this most often happens by mistake. Frequently I see a small burst of traffic to a new post, and then discover that the person actually didn’t write a review, so it is a ghost entry.
You need to watch out for these things, and message the user to kindly just say a few words - I have known posts to recover at least partially doing this.
Paul said,
Wrote on June 17, 2008 @ 10:46 am
Cheers for stopping by Andy. I never knew that you could do a similar thing with Digg, interesting to note. Cheers
Tim said,
Wrote on June 30, 2008 @ 1:05 am
And if I, as a regular user, could do anything to stop people like you from “submitting your last article” I would.
It’s the worst thing about Stumble now, the shameless self promotion of what is mostly crap.
Thankfully I think most of the more intelligent users are using adblock and noscript, so you’re not getting any ad revenue.
Paul said,
Wrote on June 30, 2008 @ 1:27 am
Tim I never submitted this article nor prompted anyone to submit for myself.
So to get off your high-horse and come down and have a frank talk about what is worth value to SU readers and what is crap would be more beneficial to myslf and to you.
I cannot stand people who just label a person … which is what you have tried o do in this instance.
For me SU is a great resource, it is not my intention to fill it with duff photos or self-promotional ads, so you can take your half-cooked ideas elsewhere.