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I have a confession to make. I’m an introvert.

Now some of you are probably going, “Nah, really?!? We’d never have guessed. :P”

If you’ve never taken the Myers-Briggs or other online personality test, I thoroughly recommend it. The results (if it’s a good test) are a fascinating look into your own behaviors.

I know before I took my first personality test back in college, I had no idea I was an introvert. Of all the results, that was the one that surprised me. (And for those who are curious, the rest of the test said that I was intuitive, thinking/feeling (exactly 50% of both), perceiving…INTP is the usual result now).

I was surprised because I loved hanging out with friends and really enjoyed meeting new people when I was hanging out with my friends…and still do. The introvert part comes because I need lots and lots of alone time to recharge, and I’m not very good at small talk (hence the reason it’s easier to meet new people when I’m around friends…I let them get the niceties out of the way, and I join in when the talking gets more serious).

Online, this translates to having lots and lots of e-mail drafts (I think I’m approaching 100 right now) that will probably never be sent because when I finally get them to sound right, it will either be too late to send it or I’ll end up deciding I didn’t like anything in the saved message and start entirely from scratch.

Because of this, I was a little concerned when I started getting some mutual fans on SU (fan + fan = friend). I’d been part of forums before, and often felt outside of the loop because by the time I finally got a response written that I was happy with, the discussion was over.

What I happily discovered though, is that StumbleUpon is different. It’s actually perfect for introverts. Unlike a blog, there are no back and forth comments for posts. Unlike a forum, your relationships don’t depend entirely on written conversations.

In fact, I discovered that most of my friends were entirely comfortable with short messages about the subject matter, or long rambling conversations about everything under the sun, and unlike many other groups I’d been part of, the banter and small talk that help extroverts form relationships could be almost entirely overlooked as I forged friendships with other like-minded individuals.

I suspect a large part of why StumbleUpon works so well for introverts is for exactly the reason that it’s creators don’t consider it a blog (yes, your page says your blog, but if you look under help, you’ll see an explanation that it’s not really one because of the lack of comments).

Now there are a lot of ways to share on StumbleUpon, and there are forums and groups that you can join. There’s even a chat room, although I’m not sure how busy it is anymore.

But if you’re like me, if you like making friends who share your interests, but carrying on small talk with a stranger can make your palms sweat (or, as I grew up being told, “ladies never sweat, they glisten”), then you might find SU fits like a glove.

What do StumbleUpon and Jango have to do with each other? I have no idea outside of the fact that I enjoy listening to Jango while I stumble. This morning, for example, I’ve listened to David Lee Roth’s Yankee Rose, CCR’s Down on the Corner, the Eagles’ Hotel California, Glenn Miller’s In the Mood, Led Zeppelin’s Viva Las Vegas and more. Feel free to add me as a friend. I have rather eclectic music taste, everything from classics to classic rock and everything in between.

Here’s how it works. You put in the name of a group that you’re interested in. That group plus others with similar sounds comprise your first station. If you want to listen to something besides what’s playing on your stations, no problem. You can find most reasonably popular songs (although no Mannheim Steamroller (my favorite Christmas music)). I found The Unicorn by the Irish Rovers, but it’s the only song of theirs on the list. Jimmy Buffet looks like they copied his Greatest Hits album and only 2 Charlie Daniels songs. A decent selection of Rush songs (I’ve been a Rush fan forever). They’re supposed to be adding new songs though, so hopefully they’ll start adding more songs for those of us who enjoy a little of everything.

So, once you create a station, you can either select other groups that you want to belong to that station, or create new stations for different types of music. You can always go back and edit a station too, if you want to remove a group that you added accidentally.

Another feature that I only recently discovered, but really like, is the ability to influence which songs play on my stations. There are three faces right underneath the title of the song that’s playing. If I don’t like a song and click the frowning face, that song won’t play anymore. The normal smiley face will ensure that the song plays again, and the grinning face makes the song play often.

Finally, I don’t have to just listen to music that I picked out. If you’re wanting to listen to a song that’s not playing on your stations right now, you can tune into someone else’s station. Underneath the smiley faces, you can see a list of people who are listening to similar music. Click on one of them to hear what’s playing on their station, and then with your approval, Jango will send a thank you note once you’ve finished listening to their station.

A last quick note. If you use Flashblock, make sure you set Jango as an exclusion, otherwise it won’t work (learned from experience).