StumbleUpon shutting down photo blogs, themes, groups Oct. 24

StumbleUpon is sure to have some pretty disappointed users come the end of next month thanks to its decision to shut down some features of the service. The company says its shutting down groups, photo and HTML blogging, and the ability to select themes, all of which are going away as of Oct. 24. StumbleUpon says the decision is about being honest about what its good at (social discovery and recommendations) and away from what its not (trying to be Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook or MySpace).

So whats going to change exactly? The ability of StumbleUpon users to customize reviews of the stuff they find on the site. That means no adding HTML or photos to them anymore. StumbleUpon will still let users write reviews and comment, but theyll be plain text only from now on. Previous reviews that have been customized in any way will live on, but theyll be converted to plain text reviews, according to the sites FAQ.Users also will no longer have the ability to add themes or a background image to their profiles on the site. Soon theyll all look the same: white background with black lettering only.

Some of these are features that are widely used (photo blogging) while others are less popular (groups, themes) among the sites 15 million users. Over the years, the service added those features before there was Tumblr or Twitter, or a large chunk of the world was on Facebook.Now StumbleUpon says it realizes its team doesnt have the time or resources to devote to features that they willingly admit other services do a lot better.

Other platforms frankly do a! really good job of [customization and self-expression] and thats what theyre all about. While certain [StumbleUpon users] may not want to go, other services do offer a better experience of that, said Marc Leibowitz, Stumble Upons vice president of marketing and business development, in an interview Thursday. Essentially, they want their users to come for the social discovery, and go elsewhere for other stuff.Leibowitz said that they know based on how people share StumbleUpon URLs that many of their users are already using Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and others for blogging anyway.

Attempting to put the changes in perspective, he noted how different the social web is today versus when his service got its start:

Its amazing how StumbleUpon started in a day and age when the searching we take advantage of now didnt exist. Google was just getting started. There are things and microblogging services that hadnt even been conceptualized when StumbleUpon was already a few years old. Thethings we built out of necessity because they didnt exist elsewhere are no longer warranted.

As reasonable as it sounds, it cant come as very welcome news forusers whove spent tons of timecustomizing their StumbleUpon review sites with HTML, or those that are just used to using StumbleUpon a certain way. But the company says its exploring possible export options for those who want to save their PhotoBlog before it disappears from StumbleUpons servers next month.

Were talking about a small, albeit passionate, group of users that were using these bells and whistlesit was costing us time to maintain these things that would be better applied to improving the discovery experience, Leibowitz said. We regret doing anything that disappoints our users, but this is being done to simplify the service and make it easier to use for a broader audience.

Thumbnail image courtesy ofFlickr userFrank Gruber

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Samsung asks ITC to ban the import of Apple devices

Image
The back-and-forth in the patent dispute between Samsung and Apple continues, with Samsung filing a request for a U.S. import ban against the iPhone, iPad and iPod, FOSS Patents reports . The complaint was filed with the International Trade Commission (ITC) on Tuesday. The ITC is a government regulatory body, which acts independently of the courts. Apple seems to be gearing up for a preliminaryinjunctionrequest in its legal case against Samsung in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, but it hasnt sought any action from the ITC, unlike in previous cases against competing smartphone manufacturers such as HTC . Samsungs move is a clever way to beat Apple to a potentially hobbling import ban, since the ITCs decision is independent of the ongoing court case, and a final decision is reached within a fairly set time frame of 16 to 18 months, once the ITC agrees to investigate. Apple is likely to respond with a complaint of its own, according to FOSS Patents Floria...
Keep reading

China to make Tesla the next BMW

Image
Tesla's China business is booming Hong-Kong traded Tencent, a company best known for its WeChat messaging app, disclosed in a Tuesday filing that it's  taken a 5 percent stake in Tesla for $1.78 billion.  The investment follows Tencent's new stake in taxi-hailing app Didi Chuxing, which can be accessed through WeChat. "I think Tencent likely wanted exposure to a company that was growing very quickly in electric and autonomous" vehicles, said Tasha Keeney, an analyst on the  ARK Industrial Innovation ETF (ARKQ) , whose top holding is Tesla. "We think the autonomous mobility as a service market could be $10 trillion in gross sales globally by the early 2030s, and companies like Tesla or  Baidu  could take a cut of that," she said. Tesla declined to comment to CNBC. Tencent did not respond to emailed requests for comment. A Tencent spokesperson  told The Wall Street Journal  that "Tesla is a global pioneer at the forefront of new te...
Keep reading

Who Will Create iTunes for the Cloud?

Image
If youre like me, your digital media life is messy. If I were to take inventory of where all my digital media resides, the list would include Flickr, Facebook, iTunes, Android, Netflix, YouTube, Picasa, Flipshare, Amazon, Kindle, iBooks, Windows PC, Mac, iPad and so on. Like I said, a mess. And while Im an early adopter, Im probably not very different from tens of millions of consumers who face digital media anarchy every day across the various screens, accounts and software populating their life. Apple is the first company to even come close to helping us manage this chaos, with iTunes. After it was first introduced a decade ago, the service becamehugely popular partly because it was the first cohesive management tool for first music, then later other types of media. But iTunes has gotten flabby with age , and the creaking has gotten more noticeable lately as the cloud becomes more and more important for digital media storage. In a way, iTunes has become the Windows of consumer medi...
Keep reading