StumbleUpon Reinventing Itself As A Social Search Engine somewhere between a Twitter and Google
Sample of new look with my daughter's page
Looks like Stumbleupon is starting to redesign itself as a social search engine “somewhere between a Twitter and Google,” says founder Garrett Camp. There’s over 8 million users a month at Stumbleupon, all of which are bookmarking and sharing websites with each other.
With over 35 million pages stored in the companies database from users stumbling it’s no wonder the company hasn’t taken these steps earlier as all this data is prime for serving as a base for search. That’s a lot of indexing.
Ever since investors Sherpalo Ventures, Accel Partners, August Capital and StumbleUpon founders Garrett Camp and Geoff Smith purchased the company back from eBay back in April it’s been reinventing itself.
First by launching launched Su.pr, its own URL shortening service, and now it’s starting to project a major redesign that changes it’s service as a social search engine.
Naturally with all these changes in the works Stumbleupon has changed it’s homepage look and feel by displaying to visitors pages recently stumbled by people they know. New StumbleUpon members will see the redesign immediately, while existing members will have to switch in order to see the new look and can do so here
In the past users went to StumbleUpon to randomly view through stumbled pages, but now it performs more like a search engine. But it only returns pages already viewed to be worthy by the StumbleUpon members, and within those results it shows you the pages that only people you subscribe to have Stumbled, rated, or reviewed. In addition to that you can sort results by everyone, just your friends, or just your own Stumbles.
The new Discover tab lets you sort by most recent stumbles from your friends, top rated stumbles, most shared, or by topic.
“It is halfway between search and discovery,” says Camp. “It is not as comprehensive as Google and not as real time as Twitter.”
StumbleUpon has also announced that it’s releasing a new version of its toolbar sometimes next week, which is going to add all those new social search functions and the ability to share links on Facebook and Twitter.
This all sounds like a great idea and we are big fans of Stumbleupon here and have been for some time. I only hope everyone else see this as a good thing like we do. We think the company is making some good choices here and the revenues somewhere estimated at $5 million – $10 million annually there is no shortage of financial support in this new venture.
What do you think about all the new changes?
Stumbleupons new home page, looks good eh
via TechCrunch
