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After a bit of hiccups with eBay planning to sell the startup it had acquired earlier last year, StumbleUpon has decided to undergo a makeover at last. The change includes the removal of users needing to have a toolbar installed in order to use the service and replacing it with a much neater small frame that appears on top of the website you visit. This enables everyone to stumble anytime without needing to have a software or a toolbar.

The latest development however requires to initiate their stumbling experience from the StumbleUpon home page. Once you initiate this, the frame follows you across each site you visit, giving you new stumbles and keeping track of your ratings etc. The idea does shed off quite a lot and most probably make the stumbling experience more lightweight.

So the basic functionality remains the same only the need to install a software has been removed altogether. I found it pretty easy as one can simply hit the thumbs up and rate the site at the same time. Easy and quick to summarize it.

Apart from that, StumbleUpon has also proposed a launching of another service called StumbleThru. It has four partners at present namely, HowStuffWorks, The Huffington Post, Rolling Stone and National Geographic. Two of these sites; HowStuffWorks and The Huffington Post are already running the service. This service provides a badge to the partner sites; which either takes you to the rating page at StumbleUpon or randomly stumbles a page on that particular site. Meaning if your site is a partner, stumblers upon clicking at this will be shown content (stumbled upon) from your site, keeping the traffic generated centered on your page. It’s more or less like mini StumbleUpon dedicated to your site.

There will be certain issues with the new design, specially to the users who have difficulties adjusting with changes. But we here at Startup Meme welcome it, it looks neat and fast.