Best Of StumbleUpon

Back on February 21st, 2012, StumbleUpon announced its intention to switch all of its users to the newest reincarnation of the site. The user response to that new information is overwhelmingly negative and it goes on for 8 pages (although logged out users may only view 6 pages).

“Rated by mbhigdon on Mar 01, 5:58pm

i’m not one who typically moans and groans about changes, but everything stumbleupon changed in this “upgrade” made the experience completely dull. when it switches over completely, i’m uninstalling.”

“Reviewed by sher1lock on Mar 01, 8:35pm

New stumble sucks. it is for intelligence deprived; terminally stupid; ad obsessed; photo mad saps. really truly sad that some thing wonderful has become a debased image of itself.”

Rated by mhlayel on Mar 01, 5:18am

It’s ugly and depressing.

Reviewed by abandoned-echoes on Feb 29, 10:22pm

Tried the new version and HATED it. With so many people voicing distaste for it, why would they decide to go ahead and implement it anyways?

The users have spoken and most agree The New StumbleUpon is a Huge Fail! Still, StumbleUpon’s CEO Garrett Camp is convinced he is doing the right thing. Continuously stroking ones own ego with trivial sites like this “StumbleUpon Love” aren’t keeping certain people in close relation with reality, if you don’t mind my speculating. People had plenty of hate for that blog post as well.

All the dedicated users have spent the last year begging and pleading with StumbleUpon not to go in the devastating directions they keep choosing. Posting thread after thread in GetSatisfaction to no avail. For many the last straw was when reading these words; “StumbleUpon has announced that as of October 24, 2011, the ability to blog and add text reviews — part of the service since its origin — will be removed in an attempt to appeal to a less literate class of users“.

True to their word, on  October 24, 2011, StumbleUpon deleted years worth of user-generated content, removed HTML blogging, standalone blog posts, and photoblogging capabilities. Additionally, all previous blog posts were converted from HTML to plain text, and all photos were deleted from previous blog posts.  In the following months, many of the die-hard users deleted their accounts and moved on. Ushered by staff members to “find somewhere else to blog, like tumblr”, they did just that.

StumbleUpon vastly underestimated the value of the bloggers who left. Without the die-hard content adders, beta testers, SU cheerleaders, miscategorized site fixers that made up the “unimportant” blogger minority, the quality of content within the Stumble system has suffered greatly and continues to decline, as does the once thriving social media sites popularity. In what appears to be a somewhat desperate attempt to regain some of what it has lost StumbleUpon is practically begging for people to care again.

Feedback and Insider Knowledge:

• Give us valuable feedback on new features we’re considering developing
• Test out new features and improvements before we release them to the whole StumbleUpon community
• Provide general input about StumbleUpon and ways we can improve the service
• Meet with the StumbleUpon team and the rest of The Council in person (as well as via conference call) to discuss your perspectives

Public Love and Endeavors:

• Be a general StumbleUpon advocate in your social networks
• Promote StumbleUpon in your daily personal life
• Organize and host StumbleUpon-sponsored meet-ups in your city
• Help other Stumblers organize their own meet-ups in their towns
• Represent StumbleUpon at exclusive events and important meet-ups

And always…

• Be an advocate for all things StumbleUpon!

What do you get for all that hard work? “We’ve given this elite group the esteemed title of “The Council” …rofl

That truly does make me giggle. All the things they are reaching for were once in their clutch, given enthusiastically and freely without ever being asked. StumbleUpon spat in the face of its most dedicated volunteers and now they miss them? The entire community support staff was replaced/relocated within the company to make room for a new support staff who seem utterly clueless about everything that has happened over the last few months. Probably so they would be able to “brave face” the outraged users without full understanding of said outrage. After all, it is easier to tell a lie when you do not know that it is a lie.

What can perhaps be considered a Last Stand by some of StumbleUpon’s most dedicated users, those who loved StumbleUpon through and through and had their back all along is fizzling out in GetSatisfaction as they say their final goodbyes and pack up the last of the picket signs. The final, final straw is the newest version of SU as it is considered completely unusable (broken) and anti-social.

“That disruption isn’t good or bad, Gaiman said, “it just is. It’s a fact of life now.” And while legislators will no doubt continue to push forward with laws like SOPA and PIPA, he said, they won’t be able to turn back the clock to a time before the Internet was invented. In a video interview he recorded last year for the Open Rights Group, which is embedded below, Gaiman talked about how he was initially incensed about people pirating his work, but eventually came to the realization that they were actually promoting his work, and he was selling more in countries where his books were pirated.”

“I think people in Hollywood are convinced that people would suddenly start buying DVDs again if only they could stop all this peer-to-peer file sharing and so on. They just are fundamentally missing the point… genies don’t go back in bottles once they’re out.”
Gaiman: SOPA and PIPA are on the Wrong Side of History

In the spirit of promoting Neil Gaiman (who I absolutely adore and idolize), did you know he has a tumblr blog? Yup, neil-gaiman.tumblr.com. One truly fantastic thing about Gaiman’s tumblr blog is that he uses it to respond to fan questions, OFTEN. His tumblr blog is perhaps one of the most direct ways a fan can reach him. I enjoy reading his responses tremendously and highly recommend you follow him.

You may have never heard of ACTA before, I know I haven’t. ACTA stands for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and due to the recent events and publicity of SOPA and PIPA, attention has been drawn to ACTA, which after reading about it appears to be just as bad if not worse than SOPA.

ACTA is an International agreement among volunteering nations to put new controls into place for copyright infringement on the Internet; however it’s being veiled as a way to stop counterfeit goods and generic medicines. Additionally, it’s how these new controls are imposed which creates problems including how the agreement has been negotiated which has raised a lot of concerns.

I think everyone in the world agrees that counterfeit goods, counterfeit medicines and copyright infringement is a problem, but as we just learned with SOPA and PIPA, going about fixing the problems the wrong way will get you nowhere and only creates more issues, including nationwide protests and ‘blackouts’.

Here are some of the concerns with ACTA that you should be aware of:

• Drafting and talks of ACTA has been shrouded in secrecy. Talks began back 2006 with official negotiations starting in 2008 and no public drafts have been made available until April 2011; those that were able to see copies prior to 2011 were bound by non-disclosure agreements.
• Once made public, the agreement says that it will remove legal safeguards that protect Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from liability for the actions of their users, in effect giving ISPs no option but to comply with privacy invasions and collection of data in order to police their users and conduct filtering of content.
• Also just like with SOPA, sites that host or link to infringing content would be held liable. ACTA would also facilitate privacy violations by trademark and copyright holders (MPAA, RIAA) against private citizens suspected of infringement activities without any sort of legal due process which will result in blocking of access to the Internet, fines and jail time.
• ACTA would require that existing ISPs no longer host free software that can access copyrighted media, and DRM protected media would not be legally playable with free or open source software, which would stop the ability to distribute free software via peer-to-peer networks.
• ACTA has been lobbied heavily by the Entertainment industry (MPAA, RIAA) which through experience we know that they have their own interests in mind, and not the peoples.

For an even better explanation, in video form, watch below and see just how evil ACTA really is. [via]

Nobody likes it, it’s always broken, users are leaving in unprecedented droves and the community of SU is so used to being screwed over that, at this point, they don’t even kick up a fuss about it, they just leave.

The new interface is impossible to use, even for users with IT backgrounds, no I am not exaggerating. It is also super frustrating because it’s anti-social and most of the provided functionality doesn’t actually function.

The once thriving community of StumbleUpon has clung to each other as they spread across the web and can be found, still playing in the pool together, in several fun places. The best two options are:

• Categorian (best option for people who liked the way of blogging SU once provided)
• Tumblr (best option for people who like instant gratification on their shared posts)

You can find everyone else and all their other blogs at the new forum SUCats, where everyone is hanging out these days.

Effective black out was effective. Newbs have all been alerted.

The “Hacktivists” known as Anonymous have waged an all out attack on several key govenerment websites including Whitehouse.gov, the Department of Justice site and other “key players”  such as Universal Music Group, RIAA and Motion Picture Association of America.

Today, they’re giving every deviantART member an all-access Premium Membership pass!

Also, check out Deviantart on tumblr, which I only just discovered.