StumleUpon announced today that it has launched a new URL-shortening service called Su.pr. The twist, however, is that this one is designed to help content creators actually increase their traffic with it. According to StumbleUpon, this is the first such service that does this.

A while back, StumbleUpon released web stumbling, which is the ability to use the service without having to download the toolbar that has accompanied it for years. The company has now announced some features that expand upon this. The StumbleUpon Team shares them with WebProNews:

First there were the acquisition rumors, then the acquisition. Then there were the sale rumors.

StumbleUpon is no longer part of eBay. Many have wondered why it was even part of it to begin with, but that pondering can now be put aside. The company has now been returned to its creators for an undisclosed amount.

The United States Marines, the Mormon Church, and the Korean Department of Tourism are all paying Australian-based uSocial to game Digg.com for them, according to a blog post at the Los Angeles Times.

Twitterer Veronica Belmont had discovered a Flickr page with an alleged upcoming toolbar from Digg that would potentially rival StumbleUpon.

I fired some questions at StumbleUpon’s VP of Business Development, John Bryan. We talked about StumbleUpon advertising, the future of social advertising and more. I even tried to get him to spill a few beans about eBay’s interest in selling StumbleUpon. Here it goes…

Chris Crum: What is the benefit to an advertiser to spend money advertising with StumbleUpon as opposed to simply submitting their site like anyone else?

Among all the social media tools that are available to companies, blogs top the list when it comes to lead generation according to a new survey from HubSpot.

The survey "The State of Inbound Marketing" asked 167 executives and business owners about their marketing strategies.

There is an interesting article at Seeking Alpha called "Why ‘GooBay’ Makes Sense." Obviously this is a "what if Google bought eBay?" piece, and feedback to the article thus far isn’t real keen on the idea, but there are some valid points throughout the article nevertheless.

StumbleUpon announced today that it will be rolling out a new design to make the service more accessible to new users. The biggest drawback has always been the fact that users had to install a toolbar to use the service, but with this new design, the need to do so has been eliminated.

TechCrunch is reporting eBay is trying to unload StumbleUpon, citing "sources with knowledge of the sale process." eBay is apparently using Deutsche Bank to find a suitable buyer, and the asking price has not been disclosed.

ProBlogger enjoyed significant traffic from bookmarking site StumbleUpon, until the site declared ProBlogger unwelcome at its domain; thanks to social media, that changed fast.

The StumbleVideos section of StumbleUpon gained in content with the addition of several new content partners.

StumbleUpon has been around a while, and if you’re like 5 million others, you understand what an addictive, stimulus-response type network it really is. But like with other social networks such as Digg, Twitter, or Facebook, many marketers are still at a loss for how to make the most of it.

Here’s an interesting question put forth by webmasters: What’s a link in StumbleUpon worth? Well, it’s nofollowed, which means not much in terms of link juice. But there may be an indirect value.

Part of that, of course, is branding. It’s good to be found in as many places as possible. But another value, as noted at SearchEngineRoundtable, is the chance that somebody stumbles upon your site and blogs about it. If so, you’ve just earned another endorsement and possibly a good link.

Popular content discovery network StumbleUpon and social web browser maker Flock promoted an ecologically aware message with their activities on Earth Day.

Long ago a little old lady asked, “Where’s the beef?” These days, Hollywood writers have a beef with the studios, and people turned to the web to discover entertainment in greater numbers.

Stumbleupon is one of may favorite social media sites, Not only can it drive traffic that matches or often exceeds that of Digg, stumbleupon users are much less critical/confrontation/judgmental than the typical Digg user.

StumbleUpon has launched SearchReviews, a new feature that allows you to discover interesting content anywhere you search.

Users of the popular web browsing discovery tool StumbleUpon can rate and review the results of searches with the new SearchReviews feature.

So much covered, seen and happened in just two days. From FaceBook to Wikipedia and everything about social media in between. Finally, we wind up and take a dekko at all that we and everyone else from the SEM community have covered: