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If there’s anything that’s a basic, unshakable tenet of the internet, it’s that users almost universally do not accept changes to a service with any level of grace or reasonable perspective.
To be fair, when you heavily use a something like a Reddit or a Fark or a Facebook and changes are implemented- it can be a bit of an unpleasant alteration to your online routine, no matter how much notice you have that the new “features” are coming. (For an example, please go over to Facebook right now and browse your news feed.)
StumbleUpon, a sort of aggregator/search engine with some sharing capabilities, is currently in for the “CHANGE IT BACK NOW” treatment from users ahead of an October 24th update to the service. The recently announced service change unsurprisingly has users up in arms- particularly because StumbleUpon seems to be removing some favored features as well as introducing some less-than-popular enhancements in its stated goal to continue “delivering you faster, better and more personalized recommendations, so that each time you click the “Stumble!” button you see more amazing content from across the web! ”
First off, Groups are being 86’d- StumbleUpon promises an export option for group information in coming weeks, but without details, it’s natural that heavily invested users will get a bit tetchy waiting. Another new feature is that all selected themes for the site are being axed, replaced with only a simple black text on white background setup.
Lastly, HTML capabilities are being stripped from reviews, and users have insinuated the site plans on further clipping users wings as far as blogging and photosharing capabilities are concerned. You can read a bit of the feedback over here, but the comments are universally negative, angry and frustrated.
Are you a dedicated StumbleUpon user? What do you think of the changes?
