Todd is a 28 year old guy in a relationship from San Francisco, California, USA.

Likes 2,427 pages, 47 videos, 64 photos • 156 fans • Received 33 reviews

Member since Oct 15, 2007

Interested in education, a wide variety of civil rights and environmental issues, people’s meandering travels through life, and great music unbeknownst to me. A former social worker in Chicago, now techie in San Fran. If you happen to stop by take a moment to say hi or friend me, I love getting the chance to chat and meet with new people.

1. What caused you to join StumbleUpon and how long have you been Stumbling?

I’ve been stumbling for just under 6 months now. At the time I decided to join I had been a Digg and Reddit user, well more of a lurker, for some time. It was around that time that I decided to be an active participant in social media and submit content. StumbleUpon was initially an alternative to those outlets and admittedly I knew very little about SU at the time. SU has quickly grown to be my favorite community.

2. How do you select your SU friends?

Probably the biggest thing I look for is high level of activity. I like to engage with others who use SU on a regular basis. There’s no real method to my madness, I don’t base my friends on how many pages a person has liked or how many friends they have but I take notice of those who have thumbed and reviewed a page that I like as well. Over time I get a good sense of who might be a good stumble friend. I have many casual friends but I generally tend to enjoy members who are actively a part of the conversation in the community. I also look for friends who may be crossovers from other social media communities I am apart of.

3. What are your favorite StumbleUpon topics, and why?

I am most interested in stumbling topics about people or topics that affect the average person. I specifically enjoy issues pertaining to access to higher education, civil rights, and more recently environmental issues. My focus of study in college was on race, class, and gender inequality and I still tend to view the world through that scope. When I see policy changes and ideological shifts at any level of society I think of how that will impact the lives of everyday people. I also enjoy stumbling music and of course the random silly picture or video.

4. Is there any feature that you think SU is missing?

I saw a post recently that I liked by Akstumble at OldSchool SEO where he suggested being able to organize your friends based on interest, I like that concept quite a bit. I also like the general ideas of being able to add more than the 200 limit of friends and being able to see more than the limited amount of users who have stumbled your submissions. I think in time all social sites adapt and grow so I’ll be interested in seeing what SU will implement in the future.

5. Do you belong to any other social networking sites?

Yes currently I belong to Digg, Reddit and the new Social News Central.

My Digg Page
My Reddit Page
My Social News Central Page

6. If so, in what ways does StumbleUpon compare favorably with the others?

Of course all of the social sites have their advantages and disadvantages but what I really enjoy about SU is the interaction with other users. I think the way the community is set up lends itself to more engaging interaction with each other. And in my experience for the most part, SU users tend to be more willing to participate in constructive and positive conversation with each other. Many friends that I have on Digg and Reddit I didn’t really become social with until we met up on SU.

7. Who are your favorite users within StumbleUpon?

There are so many people its hard to only name a few. I’ve had great conversations with the likes of people such as WordsnCollision, TalSiach, kdfrawg, bamafun, phillyLA, and Tamar.
I also enjoy a lot of the content that I’ve been given from people such as gbarberi1, socialpyramid, mokkikunta, jonathan-fields and more recently the feloniousrambler….but thats all just naming a few.

8. Would you like to tell us a little more about yourself than is in your profile?

I probably have a more unlikely path to the virtual world than most. My background is based more in social work rather than social media. From high school through my mid twenties I worked mainly with underclass citizens and people living with disabilities to help them find everything from housing to employment. I also traveled the country for a few short years playing what we in the US consider professional rugby. I use professional lightly because its anything but glamorous here and its a hard lifestyle but I was able to travel from coast to coast and I have met great friends from every country imaginable. I also consider Wrigley Field the center of the universe.

9. What would you say are the best tips for StumbleUpon success?

I am no guru but I do believe that a couple of basic fundamental qualities can get you far, or at least set up a good foundation.

Simple things such as adding constructive and positive discourse to the community, having real conversation, not always asking but also giving, reading the things you are sent, going out of your way to help friends when needed.

They may seem basic in nature by many people miss the mark, Rabeidoh has actually written a few good blog posts recently on social graces.

10. If you could say one thing to the rest of the Stumbling universe, what would it be?

Drop me a line, let’s chat it up.