Bravo, bytemeister, bravo!
I really think I speak for the MAJORITY of my fellow "Stumblers" when I say that the new version of SU is NOT AT ALL what the vast majority of us who use SU had become members for in the first place...that being SU's UNIQUE ability to allow us to find new and interesting web sites that specifically are tailored to our own individual tastes and preferences!
It is only SECONDARILY that SU developed its "social" networking capabilities which is a common social event in the develop of ANY COMMUNITY whether it be brick and mortar or a virtual community. People in both cases are drawn to a community because they all like something about what that community offers to them. It is only AFTER they join the community that they find people with similar tastes and values and start to BEFFRIEND them. This is the NATURAL progression of ANY COMMUNITY, geographic or virtual.
With the introduction of the new V4 version of SU, the developers of SU seem to be TAMPERING with the NATURAL EVOLUTION of their own beautifully developing community. For some reason, they feel that instead of allowing SU develop along its own community-based evolutionary pattern, they must now throw a MAJOR MUTATION into the beautifully developing community that they have given birth to.
Now, perhaps driven by corporate desire for increased profits, the developers of SU seem compelled to FORCE SU and its members to become a mostly DIFFERENT community than its members would have become if left to their community's own natural flow of development and evolution.
With the tremendous financial success of communities such as Facebook and MySpace which were SPECIFICALLY DEVELOPED to be SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES FROM THEIR ONSET, the SU developers think they can take their community's database (a mere COMMODITY to THEM) and change our community's goals, desires, and values and force us into becoming something that most of us DON'T want...that is almost FORCE us to become a network whose PRIMARY OBJECTIVE is to be a SOCIAL one and not one of EXPLORATION and LEARNING which is primarily the reason most of us gravitated to the uniqueness of SU in the first place!
In the natural course of our community's development, we have naturally become friends with the people we like the most and share common values with. We enjoy our SU community being like a virtual living growing and thriving New York City, Chicago, or San Francisco. But like most people we also enjoy vacationing in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. That's why we VISIT such sites as Facebook and MySpace...but it's where we vacation...not want to necessarily live. If some of us like that life style, then we will move there permanently. But you don't have to force all of us to become and live in a vacation playland!
One final thought...Perhaps the developers of SU should take a lesson from the Coca Cola Company.A few years back, the development team of Coca Cola got the bright idea that the world needed a "new and improved" version of their own time-tested original Coca Cola formula. Without any respect for their loyal customers, Coca Cola changed their original formula to "improve" it and make it "better" and hopefully attract NEW SALES and new people into their Coca Cola "community." What they caused was a mass chaos and REVOLT of the loyal Coke drinkers who enjoyed the product just the way it was for so many years! Maybe the developers of SU should rethink the drastic mistake they are about to implement before they are forced to change SU back to "SU Classic" or be forced out of business as their loyal community flees in droves...
A final word to the developers...Don't let corporate greed ruin an already wonderful and thriving community...Think before you destroy what was a very unique and great idea!!!
