What are friends?[]
Friends in Stumbleupon are not meant as people you like in the sense you find them friendly and nice, but you like their stumbles; as GMC (a developer) put it:
"Adding a friend is essentially subscribing to their content. You will stumble upon pages they have rated, filtered according to [Common Interests] displayed on that person's profile.".
The different Types[]
Look, a Venn diagram!!
There are three different ways two stumblers can be associated with each other through the friends system; they could be your fan, you could be subscribed to their favourites, or you can be mutual friends. These refer to who added who as a friend:
- Your Fan: A stumbler added you as their friend. Listed on your friends page under "People subscirbed to you"
- Their Fan: You added a stumbler as your friend. Listed under "Friends showing you pages"
- Mutual Friends: You and the other stumbler added each other as friends. Listed under "Mutual Friends".
Quirks of Mutual Friends[]
When two stumblers are mutual friends, they can send each other stumbles via the toolbar. When you have received a stumble like this, a red number appears next to the stumble button and indicates how many sent stumbles you have left. To see them, simply hit the stumble button (make sure your topic is set to 'All').
The maximum limit of friends[]
You are only allowed to add 200 friends, this means mutual friends plus friends showing you pages. The reason for this limit is subject to conjecture, however, it is known that if you have large amounts of friends, it can adversely affect your stumbles
Ghost Friends[]
Main Article: Ghost Friends
Some users may find that their friends count is wrong. This is due to the fact that one or more of your friends (people you have added) have been deleted, so that it doesn't show on your page, but technically you are still friended to them. This is an open bug, and a fix is awaited.
Note: If you know your ghost's ID, you can remove them from your friends list. Please contact StrangeJ for more details.