StumbleUpon could be getting a whole lot more boring when the web discovery engine removes its blogging function, themes and groups on Oct. 24 to focus on "improving the discovery experience," as noted in a company blog post.
Its 15M members have been able to edit a page review's HTML and create stand-alone blog posts. But StumbleUpon has decided that it can no longer support or scale its blogging function for its members. This means no more photo-blogging either.
Adding to the insult, page reviews created prior before Oct. 24 will be converted to plain text and lose any defining characteristics or images from their StumbleUpon creators. StumbleUpon is working on giving users the option of exporting their reviews and will have details "in a few weeks" -- hopefully before Oct. 24.
"We believe that the core activity of stumbling is where we can help users discover great new things and have fun. Some users may feel that some of the fun and customization may have been taken away," a StumbleUpon spokesperson tells LAUNCH via email. "However, for the majority of the community the fun and entertainment of StumbleUpon will be as strong as ever."
StumbleUpon users have left 315 comments on the company's announcement, but "due to volume, only the 15 most recent replies are being displayed."
"The only reason I'm still hanging around is the like-minded community and scrapbook bloggability of images. What you are doing by going ahead with these changes is ostracising the few remaining creative individuals who have made SU so unique over the years," wrote cermie.
Groups, which only a "small percentage" of members used, gave Stumblers a place to share their thoughts and posts in communities around topics ranging from art to sports.
Attributing the decision to resource allocation, StumbleUpon will be able to free up the resources and infrastructer to focus on other aspects of of the site, instead of catering to the needs of a small population of users, the spokesperson says.
StumbleUpon has told its members to manually copy anything they would like to keep from Groups before they disappear.
Custom themes will default to black type on white.
StumbleUpon users make 1B recommendations per month, according to the company statistics.
Camp founded the San-Francisco-based company in 2001. In 2007, StumbleUpon was acquired by eBay for $75M, but Camp and several other investors bought the company back in 2009 for a reported $29M.
SCREENSHOTS
StumbleUpon Groups will be removed on Oct. 24.
Stumblers will no longer be able to choose a theme for their account.
CONTACTS
StumbleUpon
Website: http://www.stumbleupon.com
Blog: http://www.stumbleupon.com/sublog/
Twitter: @StumbleUpon
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/StumbleUpon
Garrett Camp
Twitter: @gmc
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/garrettcamp
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/garrettcamp
Google+: https://plus.google.com/105420589826015439391