Yahoo launches new social network; Twitter redesign; Rumor: Ebay selling off StumbleUpon

The social web weekly: a quick-fire roundup of some of the news, announcements and conversations that have occurred throughout the week…

• Yahoo launches new social network in India. Yahoo India announced that it has launched a new social network for the 16-24 age bracket, reports TechCrunch. Although it's questionable if the world (or India) needs yet another social networking site, the new venture, dubbed SpotM, offers two potentially differentiating features: secret friends and anonymous SMS chat. "SpotM will allow users to make friends with other users and if they choose, make those friends private so other users don’t know about the relationship. SMS integration with anonymous chat will let users correspond via SMS without revealing their phone number".
• Twitter redesign. It seems to be makeover week on the social web (Facebook, FriendFeed etc) and today my current favorite Twitter rolled out its own redesign. Tabs have been moved from the top to the right hand side, making them more obvious targets and providing room for more, according to Twitter, although the company hasn't revealed what additionally functionality it has planned or wants to bring to the surface -- CNet's guessing search and keyword tracking based on its recent purchase of Summize. Another major improvement is the new design tool, "which allows you to change the colors on your Twitter profile with the help of a color wheel".
• Rumor: Ebay selling off StumbleUpon. Mike Arrington claims to have the scoop: Ebay is attempting to offload StumbleUpon, the social recommendation engine/browser tool bar, less than a year and a half after acquiring it for $75 million. As Mathew Ingram notes, the two companies always seemed an fit, despite some speculating at the time that the e-commerce giant could leverage StumbleUpon's technology and user base to create a powerful social shopping experience. But why offload now? Arrington says that StumbleUpon's traffic is dropping or at least has stalled (although new sign-ups continue at a pace), so perhaps Ebay wants to find the service a more fertile home before it has to take too great a loss.