The New StumbleUpon – Likes and Dislikes

Today, I decided to use the “Click here and try the new StumbleUpon” feature to see the changes that are coming to StumbleUpon. You can find this at the top of any page within the StumbleUpon site once you are logged in, and don’t worry – until the changeover is permanent, you can still go to the Settings page within the new layout and switch back to the old look and feel if you are “missing” something. You can also go back and forth between the old and new interface by bookmarking the StumbleUpon Switch link.

Now granted, the beta / trial site may not have all of the features fully functional yet, but as far as what I have seen so far, here are some of my major likes and dislikes, plus a few debunked rumors.

URL Review Page

The review page for URL’s has changed. You can now see a view count (or the number of times people have clicked on the link from StumbleUpon) and all of the people who have thumbed up the page, as opposed to the old interface that just showed a selection of the recent Stumblers who favorited it.

The old review page vs. the new one

Subscribers, Subscriptions and Friends

I have read a variety of different comments where people have assumed their friends will automatically be converted to mutual subscribers. This is not true (or if it is, it hasn’t happened yet). Whenever you switch over to the new StumbleUpon, you will notice that you only have a certain number of subscribers and subscriptions, and unless all of your previous friends have subscribed to you, then you will see a discrepancy between the numbers. In the old interface, I have 489 friends, whereas in the new interface, I have 336 subscriptions and 324 subscribers. You will find your subscriptions and subscribers under the new Stumblers tab. Mutual connections are marked with a double arrow (), similar to the one Twitter Karma uses to show mutual Twitter followers.

Stumbler subscriptions

Also missing from the new StumbleUpon test site are pending friend requests. The New StumbleUpon FAQ says you can handle them in the same way as before, but I have yet to find them in the new site. So I guess if you have some, add them and then send them the now famous “Subscribe to mine and I’ll subscribe to yours” message.

Meeting New Stumblers

In the new StumbleUpon, under your Stumblers tab, you will find Visitors, Suggestions and Recent. Visitors shows Stumblers who have visited your profile, along with the arrows to show if they are mutual connections. Suggestions show similar Stumblers, with a simple Subscribe button under each user description. If you subscribe to them from this screen, it will automatically select the accept shares to your toolbar option for those Stumblers. Recent shows Stumblers recently active on StumbleUpon, also with the arrows to show if they are mutual connections or not.

Suggested Stumblers

Also, when you click on a tag in the Discover tab of the new interface, you will see a list of people who like that tag. So, say, you’re a WordPress theme developer. Check out all of the people who like items tagged with WordPress themes for a group of Stumblers interested in what you have to offer.

Stumblers who like particular tags

Finally, when you are on a profile of a Stumbler, instead of the common interests bubble, there is a We Both Like link that will show you pages that you have both favorited. Also, underneath the Subscribe button on the Stumbler’s profile, there is a link in the new interface to Meet Another Stumbler, which takes you to a random Stumbler’s profile, which is usually someone you have at least one We Both Like item in common.

The StumbleUpon Inbox

In the old interface, you can find your inbox messages, recent shares and pending friend requests. In the new site, the inbox is just the inbox with new messages and nothing more. I will miss the recent shares options, as sometimes I accidentally double-click on my new shares number in the toolbar and skip over a page, or the page wouldn’t load and I would move onto the next one, then check my recent shares later on to get that missed page.

The old StumbleUpon inbox vs. the new one

Update: Recent Shares in the new interface is under the Discover tab as shares. Thanks Alistair!

Sharing

Sharing in the new StumbleUpon will not be as effortless as in the old interface. In the old version, you can share anything with anyone who accepts your friend request, whereas in the new version, you can only share things with subscribers. Whenever someone subscribes to you, they have to check the option to accept shares to their toolbar. Subscriptions made before the changeover in the old interface will automatically have this option checked, but after that point, you could have subscribers that are opting not to receive your shares.

Subscribers have the option to accept shares

Also, unlike the friend request, I am not sure that anything will notify someone that you have subscribed to them, so if you hope to make a mutual connection, you will have to send them a separate message to let them know you would like them to subscribe to you too.

Finally, the ability to check all of your subscribers to receive a share is no longer available. Instead, you have to click on each subscriber individually to select them to receive your share. This should hopefully cut down on the StumbleUpon spamming that has been rampant recently, as people will have to click through their subscribers one by one for each share, making it much more time consuming. At the same time, it will make it painful for those who are just sharing one thing to hundreds of subscribers.

The old way of sharing vs. the new one

Tags and Searching

This is a feature I have been waiting for, but doesn’t quite work as well as I was hoping. In the new StumbleUpon, you can search through only your favorites, as well as your friends’ favorites. While I had hoped it would search through the page / article titles of favorites, it only seems to search through the tags. For example, if I have favorited 10 articles on Facebook, but only tagged 3 of them as Facebook, only those 3 will show up in my search.

The tag cloud is now gone, replaced by a dropdown list of your tags. This would be a little nicer if it was organized alphabetically as opposed to by the number of items you have for a particular tag.

The old tag cloud vs. the new dropdown

Your StumbleUpon Profile URL

StumbleUpon user profile URL’s are changing from yourusername.stumbleupon.com to www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/yourusername/. They are automatically forwarding to the new profile URL in the new interface.

More on Upcoming StumbleUpon Changes

For more on the upcoming StumbleUpon changes, check out the following articles:

• StumbleUpon Site Changes
• Upcoming StumbleUpon Changes
• StumbleUpon Had a Makeover

Subscribe to Kikolani on StumbleUpon

If you want to share Stumbles with me, be sure to subscribe to Kikolani on StumbleUpon and send me a message so I can subscribe back and get your shares too. The Fetching Friday resources are pulled from my StumbleUpon favorites weekly!

Your Thoughts on the New StumbleUpon

Have you tried the new StumbleUpon? What are your likes and dislikes?

This post brought to you by Kristi Hines

Kristi Hines is creator of Kikolani which focuses on blogging tips and social networking. Connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

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