As an avid user of StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, Hacker News, etc., I found an article written by Brent Csutoras on SearchEngineLand intriguing. Csutoras was curious about why people are not protesting the new version of StumbleUpon when compared to the DiggBar.

StumbleUpon, the Internet discovery toolbar company that recently hit 20 million users, has overhauled their design entirely. StumbleUpon users can now feed them information from specific brands like Audi, FunnyOrDie.com, AOL, Disney, ESPN, etc. StumbleUpon users can also subscribe specifically to celebrities like Tom Hanks and Magic Johnson.

[blackbirdpie url="https://twitter.com/#!/gmc/status/104667342511931392"]
According to StatCounter, StumbleUpon has surpassed Facebook in delivering social media referral traffic. Now StumbleUpon delivers half of all social media traffic in the U.S. This does not surprise me considering that StumbleUpon hit 25 billion clicks earlier this month on their Stumble button.

StumbleUpon just launched a new feature that will allow users to Stumble through content-specific pages based on a keyword search. The Explore Box expands on StumbleUpon’s previous method of providing content based on a selection of about 500 topics. GigaOm reports that the feature will be added to StumbleUpon’s mobile apps but is currently only in the web app.

StumbleUpon celebrated 25 billion clicks of the Stumble! button on Wednesday. The company sees more than 1 billion stumbles per month, and turns 10 years old this November. StumbleUpon’s community manager Monica Semergiu announced the milestone via Twitter. [Mashable]

Ari Balogh is the former CTO and EVP of Products at Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO). Now he is bringing his experience at a major Internet media company to Internet toolbar company StumbleUpon.com as the VP of engineering. He will have a major focus on the “recommendation technology” at StumbleUpon. Balogh will also be extending StumbleUpon’s development of the open-source Hadoop database HBase. Balogh will report to StumbleUpon CEO Garrett Camp. StumbleUpon has 15 million monthly users and hits one billion recommendations per month. StumbleUpon recently raised $17 million in funding after they spun out of eBay in 2009. eBay acquired StumbleUpon for $75 million in cash in 2007. [AllThingsD]

StumbleUpon, the company known for randomly showing you websites based on your interests through a toolbar, has raised $17 million in Series B funding. The funding will be used to invest in the company’s core technology and to increase employee count. The funding was provided by Accel Partners, August Capital, DAG Ventures, First Round Capital, and Sherpalo Ventures. The company has also launched a new way to monetize their services: Paid Discovery.

StumbleUpon CEO Garrett Camp took some time off to report some of their plans to the media. Camp said that StumbleUpon is growing 700,000 new users per month. Currently they have over 12 million users.