StumbleUpon one of the collective thoughts team favourite social media sites has been getting a makeover and the features are slowly being rolled out beyond the beta group according to TechCrunch.
The new features have been slowly being coming along for beta users for a while, these include:
- Expanded use of ratings via the 5 star system
- Revamped Friends system, no more 200 user limit but limitations on friends per day
New profiling system to identify likely friends
Along with the obvious cosmetic changes, pundits expecting to see new toolbars for Safari and Google Chrome will be disappointed. Few people are suggesting see changes to the amount of stumblers coming to their site most reporting lower numbers but with no official comment it is more likely these come from a decreasing userbase.
Mutual Friends
One of the things not immediate obvious is the way friends are added has changed, you may notice your fans are now called subscribers, and when they subscribe they send a friends request (it appears in your inbox) it is unclear how StumbleUpon plans on handling the thousands of existing fan relationships but at a guess they will simply leave them as they are. However the move has put the site more in line with other social media sites.
Enough to stop Stumbles rot?
So are the new changes enough to stop the rot within StumbleUpon? Over the last six months they have been plagued with bugs in the toolbar, slow site and a significant drop in users are the cosmetic changes enough? Or will StumbleUpon slide perhaps the new “web toolbar” will be the answer? Or perhaps maybe it will take a new buyer?
I am excited to experience these changes. SU will always be a better place for *average* online user. Unlike the *other* large social news site that keeps banning its foundational users, SU has always worked with its base users while it also appealed to a broader base. Here’s to more SU user!
I haven’t used it enough yet to notice the “rot”, I seriously hope it doesn’t fold though.
Barbara – While they might not be as well publicised SU is no saint when it comes to user accounts and like ebay in many ways who are the foundational users and its appeal really do shift quickly.
Dennnis – I can’t see it folding nor is a smaller userbase a bad thing particularly if they managed to improve their user targeting a smaller group of people interested in the articles they are shown has to be better then a larger group who just hit stumble again. Likewise from a users perspective I’ve noticed more and more off topic and down right spam urls.
lol yeah it changed so much now..
I can’t wait to start making full use of these changes. I have spent a lot of time with SU since joining in January 2007 and would hate to see this tool collapse because it rotted from the inside out.
perhaps you can make a search option to allow users to search based on how likely of a match they are?? maybe even doing something to make the groups more usable?? not sure how…perhaps RSS feeds or email notifications….or a way to share websites in groups (i’m not sure if there isn’t already a way to do that) also a way to send out good stumbles to more then one person at a time… like a bulk stumble but perhaps a limit on that should be put on that too, we don’t want spammers….
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