StumbleUpon About To Piss Off Users By Removing Groups And Discontinuing Theme Selection

In an effort to “streamline” the StumbleUpon experience for users site officials have announced several updates to the company’s platform which will see the removal of Groups, the discontinuation of the ability to select from various Themes and a more simplified blogging setup.

According to a StumbleUpon representative:

We know some of you have enjoyed having these features, but we believe that this change will allow us to better focus on making stumbling amazing for you.

The changes to the system which will take effect on October 24 include:

1. Groups:

Groups will be visible until October 24th, then will be removed permanently from the site. You can manually copy anything you’d like to keep, or will be able to export group information. We are working on an export option and will have more specific details about this in a few weeks.

2. Themes:

Your current theme will remain up until October 24th. At that time all themes will be changed to a default theme that is a white background with black type. To see how your profile will look with the default theme, change your settings here.

3. HTML Reviews:

After October 24th we will no longer offer the ability to add HTML to your reviews, but you’ll still be able to access your blog posts and reviews created before October 24th, which will now appear in plain text format. You will continue to be able to write reviews in plain text format. We are working on an export option for HTML reviews and will have more specific details about this in a few weeks.

Some users have already chimed in about the changes which were announced on GetSatisfaction. User newgirl2u2 wrote:

Bye bye, StumbleUpon, I will drop out! It has been about 5 years for me, Black text against white background, how much more boring can it get????

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While Sleddy chimed in with:

So did SU poll any users before making this AMAZINGLY bad decision?

Overall reactions to the initial post have been less than stellar, here’s to hoping the site doesn’t go the way of Digg which managed to alienate their users by removing functions people actually wanted to use.