2y ago

Tumblr says it’s going to “fix” its “core experience” to appeal to new users

www.theverge.com

Tumblr plans to make changes to appeal to new users and improve growth. The post states that Tumblr is currently difficult for new users to use and curates content poorly. Tumblr aims to improve how users discover and sign up, encourage frequent engagement, and boost creators' ability to attract audiences. Specific changes mentioned include updating the confusing reply and reblog system to make conversations clearer and removing duplicate reblogs. Interestingly, the post does not discuss Tumblr's plans to integrate with the ActivityPub protocol. Tumblr has had a turbulent history but has stabilized under its current ownership, though some long-time users may not want a more optimized social feed.

There's a soft spot in my heart for Tumblr. I hope they find their way and become a bigger player.

69 comments

Absolutely miserable that they would do this. You just can’t ever replace, or replicate a place like Tumblr. Tumblr isn’t for people who want well curated content. It’s not for people who want a website that works all the time or makes sense. It’s a dense forest you’re supposed to wander and stumble through, and in the process you see things that you would absolutely NEVER get the chance to see otherwise, if you hadn’t been walking in that particular place at that particular time. It’s spectacular, and so specific, and the reblog system is a huge part of that. I’m sad about reddit and twitter, but tumblr is MY house, damn it! Stay the hell away from my unprofitable weirdness hive.
- Unfortunately, this is what always happens when you entrust your content to a corpo. Is there no fediverse alternative to Tumblr?
  
  i don't think there can be. tumblr's draw isn't any features it has (apart from maybe homepage customisation, but you get that with a website) it's the features it lacks (algorithms, etc). and it's the community, which was curated by a lot of coincidences at the right time.
  you'd need to get everyone to up and move at once, with the ability to reblog posts from old tumblr. i think it's unreplicatable
  
  That’s absolutely true. As someone who’s hung around there since 2010ish, trust is too strong a word. But it does make me sad. If there is an alternative, i’ll happily start using it. But it’s specifically the other people there and the things they do, far more than the platform itself, that I love. If it does all go to hell, I’m sure that people will talk about where they’re going and I can follow. It’s just such a distinct place. It would be the end of an era if it went the way of instagram or twitter.
  
  I have not looked into it or anything, but I think a tumblr alternative would do very well on the fediverse. I think it could even be better for self-hosting than Lemmy.
- Yes!
Maybe they never should have gotten rid of the porn...
All of us in the tumblr community are fuming, the only reason why tumblr has survived all this time is because it is different from other corp social media. If they follow through with their plan to turn tumblr into a twitter/tiktok copy, I will move completely to the fediverse equivalent (Calckey is almost perfect, if just needs to let me follow hashtags)
- The main thing I was concerned about is then getting rid of the reverse chronological sorting and they've backtracked on that, so hopefully it won't be completely awful. It did just seem like a weird business memo that the staff were told to put on Tumblr rather than anything user-friendly. Just sounded way too corporate.
- I didn't know about calckey! The UI is so pretty!!!
- Try using Antennas.
  
  I still haven't figured out how to use Antennas. Other than that, Calckey has been a super great experience.
Discord: "The biggest problem: our current usernames can often be too complicated or obscure for people to remember and share easily."
Tumblr: "The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use."
Why does everyone think we are collectively too stupid to figure out how to use the internet? Like holy crap.
Yeah, I know these updates are geared toward a very specific audience, but I'm allowed to resent that, lol. Stop infantilizing users; we are not stupid.
- Because a lot of users don't want to learn how to use a system, and a lot of users are stupid.
  You might not be stupid, but you probably aren't the typical user.
- Nobody wants to say it aloud because of the legal implications, but the majority of the internet is literal underage children. Like, probably over half of Discord users are actual kids who are vulnerable to being scammed when an account dupe of their favorite YouTuber friends them.
  This has the effect of making the average user quite stupid, because they're too young for intelligence or wisdom - but as long as they sign up and promise they're 18 ("really!") then they can be advertised to.
  
  Shit, my friend is 44 and got scammed by a "girl" on Instagram who convinced him to mint his art as NFTs so she could buy it. He didn't have the necessary funds (artist, remember?), so he managed to convince our other friend, a surgeon (also 44), to "invest" for a cut of the insane gains 😶
- Why does everyone think we are collectively too stupid to figure out how to use the internet? Like holy crap.
  Normies are not very tech savvy and they are completely unwilling to deal with even the most minor inconveniences. Most people just want to open their mouth and have someone dump some internet in there. "Having to curate an experience" is not something many people are willing to do.
- While I generally agree, I think if the internet has taught me anything, it is that the majority of people are, in fact, very, very VERY stupid.
- I question:
  People who are unwilling to put in a mild amount of effort to understanding something.
  Are they going to improve or impair healthy online discussions?
- Tumblr is trying to appeal to the user demographic that wouldn't bother going through the knee-high obstacle that is to sign up and learn to use Lemmy.
- If a platform is only usable by someone of average tech savviness, then its reach is limited to half the population. This would be extremely limiting for a mass market product. As such, platforms cater to the least savvy 20% or lower.
- "Mom said it's my turn to fuck over my userbase!"
Trumblr is still corporate social media and given a different turn of events would sell you out to get ahead so I don't have any soft place in my heart for that.
Good timing on their part; I just rejoined Tumblr in order to reconnect with some friends and this is just the push I needed to delete my account again.
Yeah I used Tumblr religiously back in the "glory days". '09 to '15. Aged out of it but it'd be nice to have another platform to get content from, I especially miss their fandoms. So many wonderful, talented, creative people post great stuff but I find it hard to FIND them these days.
Welp, it's fucked.
And I was just thinking of re-joining after my brief stint with it circa 2013
I really wish they’d give us an update on that ActivityPub support. It’s been so long since they’ve even mentioned it
- Here's a Masto post from an ex-employee:
  Thinking about making a "I was part of the Tumblr activityPub federation project ask me how it ended" t-shirt and wear it on my PFP here.
  The CEO posted this reply to Twitter, acknowledging that Meta had beaten Tumblr to the Fediverse.
  Here's a screenshot of a post suggesting it's not a high priority.
  
  And that’s why corporate media will always suck.
  Does this feature help our users? Yes, but does it make us more money? No. So we’re not doing it.
A little late for that bud
I've been using Tumblr since 2014ish. I dunno, man. I think it's fine as-is. I see exactly the content that I want because I subscribed to it. If I wanna get *crazy * I can use that For You tab they added recently. I hope they seek out feedback from its current userbase before they go making any drastic changes.
If Lynda Carter can learn how to use Tumblr after leaving Twitter, other folks should be fine (no shade, she's just older).
- Well of course Wonder Woman can.
Tumblr's problem, at least when I stopped using it 10 years ago, was that it was kind of an SJW hellscape. The most toxic of toxic activists made their home there, and it was a profoundly unpleasant Internet experience. They'd have to pay me to use their site again.
- By that same logic reddit was a harbor of alt-right and other shitty people but if you curated your experience with it you could mostly avoid it. Similarly so with tumblr in my experience.
  
  That's good to know.
  Tumblr didn't have a ton of curation tools back when I was a regular user, but Twitter did, so I ended up spending most of my time online there until October of last year. The incident where Elon Musk carried a sink to the office was all the info I needed to know Twitter was about to take a nosedive. Luckily I really enjoy the fediverse.
- I think this was more of a feature of 10 years ago - that being, people meaning well and learning about political theories for the very first time, but then ignoring all nuance and using those concepts to bully each other instead of actually make the world better. Vox has an interesting article about that phenomenon as it played out in fandom circles, and if I remember right it does talk specifically about Tumblr. Huge difference between actually working toward social justice, and simply recycling justicey-sounding words into arguments and harassment campaigns. Things do seem to have leveled out a lot as people have aged and norms have shifted a bit, but I can understand someone feeling wary of the site for that reason.
  
  Would be curious in the article if you can turn up a link to it.
Never in my life I've been on tumblr
- my only contact with the site is screenshots someone posted in some site
Who still uses tumblr 😄
- More folk than you'd think! We had an influx of Reddit folk recently (wasn't expecting them to be embraced as much as they have been, nice to see)
  
  during the lockdown i tried to connect my WP personal blog to a tumblr account i had from years ago, the tech community their almost don't exist, specially if compared to other social media platforms. Not sure about them now tho.
- I use it

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