This week has been one of big changes as Google+ rolled out to the general public, Facebook announced massive upgrades to their social networking system and StumbleUpon managed to anger users a month ahead of their proposed changes. Here’s 5 stories from the last week you should be sure to check out.

Google+ Ditches Private Invite-Only Status, Welcomes Everyone To Platform

Google+ managed to attract more than 30 million users to their new social network when it was in closed beta with private Google and user invites only and this week they announced that anyone can now join and enjoy the network. With Facebook fans angered over the networks newest changes to profiles Google+ could have a big month ahead of them in terms of user number growth.

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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

StumbleUpon on Tuesday launched a new “Widget Creator” which allows bloggers to showcase their favorite content from the company’s website.

Deemed The Widget Creator the program allows website owners to place content in a special box on their own sites. Users can choose to showcase content from certain sites that they choose or they can opt to setup certain topics such as entertainment, technology, music, etc. Other content that users stumble can also be included in the process.

Webmasters can even choose to use the “Favorites” from their StumbleUpon account to create the content that will be displayed in the widget.

The program also allows the header title to be changed by users, for example the widget shown above uses “StumbleUpon on StumbleUpon (A Real, Live Widget!)” however it can easily be changed to anything the user chooses.

The program, much like the Facebook Like button and Twitter’s tweet button is simple to use, just fill out the required information and a line of code is generated that can then be placed within your websites template. 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

StumbleUpon has announced that they are preparing “StumbleUpon Pro,” (tentatively named) new user accounts which will launch at the start of 2011.

According to StumbleUpon, users will be able to create their own content, while suggesting other content from the web.

The StumbleUpon team say the new feature falls somewhere in-between a paid content provider account and a regular user account.

They explained to Mashable that:

A pro account would essentially work the same way a verified account on Twitter does, giving the publication/company/business a level of legitimacy and authority that will entice regular StumbleUpon denizens to follow it.

StumbeUpon employees are still unsure exactly how Pro accounts will be labeled on the website, but they do note that the content would be targeted to more effectively reach users who would be more likely to follow each company.

The good news? It may be free to use, with the ability to pay for better site placement, which makes for a more level playing field for more company’s. read more

Yesterday we reported that blog commenting system Disqus joined the iPhone and Android fray, now we’re happy to announce that another popular social sharing system among blogs, StumbleUpon, has also released an iPhone App, while Google Android users also have an app for that.

StumbleUpon allows users to submit interesting, fun and creative articles to the site, at which point those sites can be “Stumbled” by users as they are taken around the web by the companies automatic site stumbling application. The more stumbles a site gets, the more visitors they begin to receive.

According to the company, their 11 million members will see the “best for mobile stumbling” web posts, which includes photos, YouTube videos and news among other posts. The application has also been optimized for mobile screens and serves pages with optimized connection capabilities.

StumbleUpon users will also see their “favorites” section and “recommendations” just as they do on the web based application. read more

Speaking of successful social web apps in the blogosphere, ReadWriteWeb runs a story about StumbleUpon starting to ban users. Apparently they’ve heard from “a handful of users” that they’ve been banned, without any word from StumbleUpon it seems. The comments adds to the mixed picture that’s being drawn up in the story. Fact is, there’s just not enough to go on to really know what’s happening here.

Do you know? Have you been banned from StumbleUpon, or do you know anyone who has?

Are you a fan of StumbleUpon as a means to share cool stuff — and, perhaps, from time to time, gain a small boost in traffic should your site get Stumbled?

Would you be interested in getting to know fellow Stumblers, particularly by their Stumble ranking?

If the answer to both questions is “yes”, then it may interest you to know of a new service called StumbleRank, which is a new service put together by Muhammad Saleem, uber-social-media maven (and former BlogHerald author, I might add).

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StumbleUpon is a tool that allows its users to discover web sites, videos, and pictures that have been previously found and labeled by other users. Its a lot of fun, and perhaps just as important, a great source of traffic for your blog.

But other than doing the obvious, such as becoming a member of StumbleUpon, finding “friends”, and otherwise rating sites and being a good Stumbler, what else can be done — and understood — about StumbleUpon to maximize your efforts?

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