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"Really this is the biggest refresh in terms of look and feel that we've ever had on the web," StumbleUpon CEO Garrett Camp told Mashable.
While the social web discovery site sported a green and blue logo with its initials, SU, winding through it Sunday, it switched to an orange logo that includes more abstract initials Monday. The website's once Facebook-like design has been reworked to be visually driven, and a new StumbleUpon Bar integrates the Explore box that the company launched in August (the Social Bar, which launched on the iPad app in July, is still nowhere to be found).
Beyond cosmetics, the biggest debut in the re-design is the integration of "Channels." The feature is a way for brands, publications and celebrities to participate on the platform without intruding into the StumbleUpon experience. Such entities who had been looking to promote themselves on the platform, even though it bans business accounts in its terms of service, were not welcomed with open arms by users when they set up regular StumbleUpon accounts.
"Users had the expectation that they would see an individual acting on good will to share a piece of content rather than a for-profit company promoting a piece of content for selfish reasons," Camp says. "Now we have a place where it's ok for users to publish their own things."
If a user doesn't follow a channel, its content won't pop up in their "Discover" feeds. And even if they do, they don't get every update from the channels they follow, but only those that StumbleUpon's magic algorithms determine they will be interested in.
In addition to giving brands and publications a home on StumbleUpon, Channels fit in nicely with the platform's recent trend toward specificity. The Explore Box, which allows users to Stumble a specific topic rather than a broad category, took the number of StumbleUpon interest verticals from about 500 to more than 500,000. With Channels, users can drill down further -- to specific publications, celebrities and brands.
Users who more specifically delineate their interests could allow advertisers to better target ads. Meanwhile, the one-time Firefox plugin has enjoyed a growth spurt as it expands its mobile offerings. It recently doubled its user base in 16 months and surpassed 20 million users.
