Last month on September 20, 2011, StumbleUpon started sending out emails to their users informing them that on October 24th, 2011, Groups, Themes, and both photo and html blogs would be discontinued.

Stating the change was being made in an effort to focus attention on making sure the content that you discover through their system is high quality, fast, and relevant to your interests.

Like with any change, a small group of users were upset, but the reality is that most users never really used these features anyhow.

Here’s a quick recap on how the changes will take place:

• Groups: Groups will be visible until October 24th, then will be removed permanently from the site. You can manually copy anything you’d like to keep, or will be able to export group information. We are working on an export option and will send more specific details in a few weeks.
• Themes: Your current theme will remain up until October 24th. At that time all themes will be changed to a default theme that is a white background with black type. To see how your profile will look with the default theme, change your settings here.
• Blog Posts/HTML Reviews: After October 24th we will no longer offer HTML/Blogging functionality, but you’ll still be able to access blog posts and reviews created before October 24th which will exist in plain text format. We are working on an export option and will send more specific details about this in a few weeks.

This week, on October 10th, 2011, StumbleUpon followed through with its promise by emailing all users instructions on how to export both Groups and their Blogs.

They have focused Blog export efforts to work with WordPress, while the Groups export is an XML file.

For more details on how to perform the exports, check out the Blog Export Guide and the Groups Export Guide.

Make sure to hurry up, as they clearly indicate that you must have them export prior to the October 24th shut down date.

Oh and Congrats to StumbleUpon for breaking 20 Million Users… Amazing how fast and well they have grown and matured.