Change In The Friends Feature Of New Stumbleupon

The new Stumbleupon V4 has raised many concerns for some of the users. Besides the new interface, I believe one of the hottest issues is about the “Friends” features. The current feature of “Friend” will be removed and replaced by Subscriptions & Subscribers.

To perform an upgrade on any Social Networking sites will frequently lit up unhappiness among the users. I certainly don’t want to let the new Stumbleupon turn me down. Stumbleupon is a great place to discover new contents & interesting stuff.

Bookmark this Switch link: http://www.stumbleupon.com/switch.php. To switch to the new interface, click on this switch. Click on this switch again to switch back to the old interface.

The “Friends”

Under the current version, Friends is more important than Subscription. With Friends , you can interact & share contents with each other. The new Stumbleupon handles this interaction differently, connect with Friends is through Subscription which offers 4 ways as follow:

1. Conversion Of Friends To Subscribers Automatically, Really?

Previously, I was convinced by the Stumbleupon FAQ: Where are my friends? about the Friends feature …

Your friends in the previous interface are now the equivalent of Stumblers that you are subscribed to and can mutually share sites with from your toolbar. To find your former friends, go to Stumblers > Subscriptions and look for the two-way icon under their avatars. If the icon is there, it means you can mutually share sites with each other.

It sounds like all friends will be converted to Subscriptions or Subscribers. However, if you login to the new Stumbleupon today (19 Oct and most probably since three days ago), you will find a section called “Friends who are not subscriptions” (Stumblers > Subscriptions). Friends who are not under your subscriptions are placed under this section. According to the Official StumbleUpon Blog, this is a temporary sub-section to help users to bring their contacts up-to-date.

2. Subscribe To The “Friends who are not subscriptions”

Now, it may be a good time to do a bit of friend cleaning. It is advisable to re-access your existing friends & subscribe to their favorites under this sub-section. There is no clear direction of what exactly Stumbleupon is going to do with our existing friends. Nevertheless, no one would like to lose their friends contact after the change has taken place. It is also important to check the “accept shares to my toolbar” checkbox , to enable friends to share their contents with us.

3. Would We Lose The Contact With Our Friends?

4. Friend Request vs. Subscription

In current version, making a friend request is straightforward, through a mouse click on the “Send Friend Request” link. Both parties become friends when the others accept the request.

Under the new version, the same result can be achieved by subscribing to others’ favorite, both become mutual when the others subscribe back by checking the of the “accept shares to my toolbar” checkbox.

5. Inbox vs. Subscribers

Currently, all our friend requests are received in the Inbox where we accept or reject the requests from there. In the new version, we look for the Subscribers (Stumblers > Subscribers) which has no two-way icon under their avatars. We visit their profile & Subscribe to their favorites by checking of the “accept shares to my toolbar” checkbox.

6. Subscribers Who Have Their “accept shares to my toolbar” Unchecked