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: read more

Facebook may have more than 750 million users and a massive network of sites that allow users to “Like” and “Recommend” webpages but when it comes to social sharing StumbleUpon is the new king of the internet.

StatCounter racked up total shares on various networks and found that while Facebook use to generate close to 70% of traffic based on social sharing that number has falling below 40% while StumbleUpon accounts for nearly half of all social shared links.

Here’s a look at social sharing stats from the US: read more

Evernote has become the pre-imminent note taking tool for many mobile phone and desktop and internet browser users. The program not only allows users to take notes, but also share those notes on Twitter and Facebook, allowing for instant collaboration from a myriad of devices and now we have learned that the company has passed the 10 million registered users mark.

That 10 million user milestone is a 67% increase over the company’s 6 million users in January of this year, while 424,736 users are said to be premium users at the low cost of just $5 per month.

In celebration of their numbers the company has also released information on the type of devices used by their customers. For example, 46% of Evernote users have two devices they use the software with, while 18% use three devices routinely with Evernote, 7% have four devices for Evernote use and a high 4% use the program on five or more devices. read more

Pepsi is taking social sharing to a whole new level. The company on Wednesday announced the world’s first “social vending machine” which allows users to insert money and send refreshing beverages to friends who can then access their free drinks through other social vending machines around the country.

The system is simple enough to operate, first a user walks up to a machine and chooses a beverage to “share” with a friend, they then insert their cash and enter a personalized text message, while some machines will even have cameras for video messaging.

After the users send the drink they’ve paid for the receiving party can access their beverage from any social vending machine they can find.

Pepsi will also be offering random free drinks to social media users in a program they call “Random Acts of Refreshment.”

Here’s what Pepsi had to say about their social vending machines: read more

Facebook on Monday rolled out several updates to their Group feature that makes it easier to share content with small networks.

As part of the updates Administrators for groups now have the option to implement a “new member approval” system, allowing Admins to ensure that groups do not grow larger than they would like to administer.

Also added is the ability to share entire albums with group members, rather than going through photos one by one as was the case with the older Groups setup.

Groups can also now implement the Facebook Questions system which was left off the last update to the Groups system.

Finally a Group Search function has been added to the mix which allows users to perform searches within each group they are participating in, allowing for a much more streamlined option. Users should be aware that this final feature is rolling out to different members throughout the week and may not be available in your account immediately. read more

Windows users who take advantage of the Evernote app will be happy to learn that the program has once again been upgraded.

This time the company is focusing their efforts on social media options for the note taking program after following up their recently heralded web app redesign.

Among social sharing options are the ability for Windows users to share notes (a first for the company). Users can choose to share individual notes through Facebook, Twitter and email at this time, while entire notebooks can also be shared for more open access to documents among workgroups. read more

Justin.tv in March will launch a new mobile app called SocialCam which will allow users to more easily upload their videos to their favorite social networks.

The announcement comes just 5 months after Justin.tv launched their first Google Android and iPhone apps, both which will receive the new SocialCam option.

Justin.tv developers quickly learned that nearly 90% of live broadcast videos from their first app were actually watched after they were posted online, leading them to look more closely at social sharing .

read more

Social link sharing website StumbleUpon has something to be proud of this week, the company has announced that this past Monday they set a new personal best for shares/second with stumblers visiting 320 links every one second, equivalent to 27.5 million stumbles in just a single day.

StumbleUpon shared their new record via Twitter and also announced that they sent more than 700 million visitors to other sites during the month of December.

StumbleUpon, much like Reddit, has received an increasing number of visitors after Digg.com revamped their website, leading to anger among many visitors of that social discovery website.

StumbleUpon has also benefited from an increase in active visitors which surpassed the 13 million member mark this past month. read more

While we watched Digg stumble from their perch in 2010 upon the release of their new interface, another popular social link sharing website Reddit, saw traffic numbers increase by more than 230% from January through December.

Reddit announced January 2010 pageviews of 250 million, while December pageviews brought in 829 million views. If you’re doing the math, that’s a 231.6% increase in just 12 months.

Adding insult to Digg injury, Reddit execs also announced that the average “time spent on site” stats have vastly improved, from 12 minutes and 41 seconds in January to 15 minutes and 21 seconds in December.

To put Reddit’s meteoric rise into perspective, Digg in July received 200 million pageviews with many indicators pointing to a shrinking user base that appears to be working in Reddit’s favor.

It also appears that Reddit growth has no plans of slowing, the company recently increased the number of servers they are running from 50 to 119, while memory capacity was bumped from 16TB to 48TB and delivery capacity was pushed form 10.1 trillion bytes to 44.4 trillion. read more