#i really have no concept of this site's userbase tbh | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

everythingshinesunderthesun · 8 months

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I would really love to sit down with the person currently in charge of tumblr's design and poke their brain about where they see the site going in the next 5-10 years.

I don't think the latest changes to the dashboard menu are the worst thing ever. I don't necessarily like them — I don't think the old dashboard had a problem with clarity, most popular websites and apps nowadays use simple icons to communicate functions, and the new one feels uncomfortably busy — but I don't think it altogether ruins the experience.

I also don't hate algorithms as a concept: Even if tumblr's is inexplicably terrible, so long as I at least have the option to sort chronologically, I think I can tolerate it.

This little experiment with removing people's profile pictures, though? I really can't rationalize it in any way that makes sense from a design perspective. The idea that's made the most sense to me is that post I just reblogged where someone hypothesized it could be a way to sneak ads into the feed more easily, and if that's the case, that's both a genius stroke of marketing and an incredibly questionable business decision.

Like, I could understand if this was some sort of attempt at a last-ditch, pump-and-dump by the current owners of tumblr: Destroy the UX for the sake of monetization, go to some tech giant, tell them "look, our userbase is small, but our ads get so much engagement!!!" and sell for whatever you can get before they figure out the site is dying.

Problem is, who would buy tumblr? Given its history? When we're heading into a recession? The time to pump-and-dump would have been... Well, around the time Tumblr sold to Yahoo for literal billions. Right now I can't imagine any tech giants would make a serious bid to purchase.

So, the alternative: Tumblr needs desperately to crawl out of the hole and is trying anything they can to monetize. Fair enough, but I really have to question if they're not overestimating just how strongly ingrained their die-hard userbase is. I know they probably feel strong right now, given the practically overnight collapse of Twitter, but this? I think it really has the potential to drive a lot of the users who're already unhappy with the site's design/moderation/performance, and in spite how much the internet has been shrinking these past couple years, it's not like there's a shortage of alternative social media options to try out.

They're saying this is a test and tbh I think it's likely they'll end up reversing it, given the unanimity and size of the backlash, I'm just interested in what exactly they thought they would achieve here.

#meta

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eclairbrun · 3 years

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I keep hearing that twitter is where the writing community is at, and stories about people getting book deals from twitter pitches, or forming networks where they can warn one another about bad agents and the like has me wanting to be a part. But like... I just die inside every time I so much as look for other writers and think about following them. I keep thinking “I should post more art there or talk about my writing progress there, and follow other aspiring authors. Like, I really like the idea of being more a part of the writing community. But any time I post there, I feel like I’m contributing to a problem. Even the fact that I’m using my account to follow some artists make me feel kinda icky.

It’s such a bad site. I mean, the format is really only good for quick thoughts and announcements, but people treat it like a platform for actual conversation, which it could hardly be worse for. In that sense, it’s basically tailored for taking things out of context or reducing concepts. That’s without getting into how bad its algorithms are. The anachronic feed, the fact that I’m so bogged down by recommended posts that I can’t find the stuff I actually chose to follow, and the metrics things get promoted by all just worsen the user experience.

And also I just... I mean... I have no respect for the company. They’re so censorious over shit like making journalists eat their own words, but somehow can’t do anything about people using their site to share child p*rn or otherwise prey on minors even after being notified by the victimized children. (Or wait, was their official statement that it didn’t violate their policy? I can’t remember.) They’re getting sued right now by someone who apparently has proof that they were colluding with state officials to suppress certain accounts in exchange for government contracts. They can swiftly stop any story they dislike from trending, but somehow were unable to stop the N-word from trending the other day about the World Cup? Yeah. I don’t buy that one. They let that stay up to cause drama, because outrage feeds their algorithm. The site tacitly endorsed racism in order to profit off of the offense it caused, and then pretended after to be morally outraged. Fuck ‘em.

There’s a lot of smaller sites where the way the site itself operates is so much better, or at least better in a lot of key ways, but because it’s less strict with content policing, it gets a bunch of skeezy refuges from the big sites, so they’re similarly tolerant of bile driving clicks (although they’re at least not hypocrites about it.) And either way no one seems to be moving the main hubs for industry discussion to other sites.

Tumblr’s a dumpster fire, but the only thing that makes it less functional than twitter on a user end is the smaller userbase. And tbh having lost a lot of tumblr toxics too twitter in the porn ban, I’m not sure that smaller user base is a real negative.

#clair's corner #twitter #rant

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