#also probably tumblr's algorithm changing and having a for you feed

[cavesalamander]

Hey that one post you made in 2013 is almost at 10k notes

OH TRUST ME I AM WELL AWARE LMAO

My phone has been blowing up for this past week I swear kejfkebfbjdjdkfj

Way back 10 years ago when I said I'd do it, I was still in college and it had jumped to the 5 or 7k or so it was back then, I actually got started working on the damn thing because it looked like it was going to happen.

Then the notes dried up and I was like oh phew, I'm good, I'm fine, I won't have to.

BUT THEN.

This goddamn renaissance of notes has been orchestrated by @composeregg because I've just started playing Mass Effect for them and some other friends and of course my beloved Mako is right there, and I tell them about it.

And hey, what do you know, it turns out I actually do still have that canvas board I started painting it on?? It somehow survived college and like 5 moves.

So like, I guess if yall can do it, at least I won't have to start from scratch?

[drcyan]

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience. 

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content. 

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up. 

We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.

Actions & Next Steps

Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.

Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.

Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.

The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.

Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant. 

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are. 

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds. 

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.

Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs. 

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread. 

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads. 

Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. 

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.  

Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.

The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.

It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.

Actions & Next Steps

Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it. 

Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.

Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.

Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.

Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.

Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.  

Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.  

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.  

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages. 

Test what the right daily push notification limit is. 

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.

Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.

Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users. 

Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

Conclusion

Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.

[kaiasky]

Complete-ish Guide To Settings You Might Want to Change

These instructions will be for desktop, because the settings are easier to find there. You can do the same on mobile, but it might be in different places.

Dash settings

Your dashboard is broken down into several feeds, including "Following" and "For You".

"Following" is primarily the posts of people you follow, "For You" is algorithmic.

If you just joined, "For You" is default, if you're a longtime user it's "Following". You can change this in the settings on the right

A lot of longtime users will tell you that the Following feed is where we spend most of our time. But try out all the feeds, and see what you like most.

The settings that are settings:

To start, click the settings gear under the account icon (the abstract person head).

This should take you to the General tab. Key settings:

Community Labels: By default anything NSFW is silently hidden. You can change how each subtype is handled.

Hide Additional Mature Content: If you have an iPhone disable this or it'll hide every post from you on the off-chance it contains porn.

If you're under 18 as determined by the birthdate you entered on signup, you can't change these. (If you want them on, you'll have to make a new account and lie)

Under the "Dashboard" tab, you can enable timestamps, which is mostly just nice information to have. sometimes a post is from 2010 and you can be like wow.

The next four probably have the biggest impact on your tumblr experience, so I'm gonna do a breakdown.

Best Stuff First reorders your "Following" to have popular posts at the top. Disabling it makes your feed chronological. I like it off, but up to you.

Include Stuff In Your Orbit and Based On Your Likes put various content from "For You" into "Following". Personally, I disable them to keep "Following" purely posts by people I follow, and then switch between feeds to get what I want.

Followed Tag Posts will put content from the "Your Tags" feed into your "Following" feed. Since you can go to the separate tags feed, I usually turn this off (it tends to show me a lot of duplicate posts), but up to you.

Under the "Notifications" tab you can tell Tumblr to stop sending you emails.

I'd recommend disabling all the emails--if you get a bunch of replies, Tumblr will happily send you dozens of emails, and you don't need that.

Notifications is the push-notifications in-app/in-website. The mobile app, for some reason, has a much better interface for controlling these, including the option to only get activity-notifications for mutuals. You can leave these on, or turn them off if you find the flood of notifications is distracting.

Tumblr News is a newsletter, it usually just has content from @fandom and the other staff-run recap blogs.

Conversational notifications sends you more emails.

Under the "Tumblr Labs" tab you can enable a bunch of cool beta tests.

I particularly suggest Reblog Graphs, What you Missed tab, & Popular Reblogs tab, but they're all fun to try out. A lot of these are honestly better than the For You dashboard.

For each blog you have, you can customize it's Blog Settings. Beyond things like setting an avatar or description, there's a few settings that are fun.

Custom Theme gives you your own subdomain at [blogurl].tumblr.com.

This makes your blog easier to search, and a lot of 3rd party tools depend on you enabling it. It also makes it easier to link your posts to people who don't have tumblr accounts.

You can completely customize the CSS/HTML/Javascript. you can go legitimately crazy. It's not a requirement, but if you want unlimited flexibility, go wild.

On the contrary, if you wanna run a more private blog, you can disable this and then hide your blog from search results/non-registered users.

Likes and Following are public by default. I like to turn these off so I don't have to worry about like, "what will people think if they see i'm following [...] or liking [...]". But it's also fair to keep them public if you'd like.

The other Blog Settings are important but pretty self-explanatory I think.

Finally, there's some useful tools I like:

XKit Rewritten - A bunch of scripts (like RES for Reddit). The one I really like is "mutual checker", which shows at a glance which blogs you are in mutuals with. Which is such a good feature it's included in the mobile apps by default i think.

siikr.tumblr.com - Tumblr search is bad, and google's indexing of tumblr blogs is worse. Siikr will find any post you've made on your blog. Because disk space is limited, only use it to search your blog, and if you're tech savvy consider running a local copy from source.

[ungrateful-cyborg-moved]

Social media comparison

Alright. I've tried different new/alternative platforms lately in hope to find something I really liked, and there are very promising ones. I didn't try everything, of course, but this is a kind of overview of my journey so far? Or just my thoughts on the matter.

I've tried Pillowfort, Bluesky, Mastodon (didn't last long enough to have much of an opinion, it simply didn't click), Dreamwidth and Cohost (as of today, can't post there yet).

My comparison under the cut:

► I appreciate that they're algorithm free, whether it's because they truly believe in an Internet rid of the most invasive of them or because it's too expensive to implement on a brand new platform or some other reason. Only the future can tell, but for now it's nice.

► Pillowfort: beside the post formatting that I find extremely comfortable, my favourite thing is probably communities. I feel like this is the strongest "pro" in favor of Pillowfort because this is where they truly distinguish themselves from other social media.

Communities, in a way, remind me of forums. They're however easier to take in hand since you don't have to deal with as many options and choices. In my opinion, communities on Pillowfort are a bit lacking in functionalities though. I think more tools to easily organize them would help, like a widget or something to link stuff so you can create and animate events within said communities.

(I also feel like Pillowfort would gain from not being dark blue. We have more than enough dark blue websites, and it doesn't go well with the warmth invoked by its name in my opinion, but that's a minor detail and just a matter of taste.)

► Bluesky: basically Twitter but better. No algorithm, for a start. The curated feeds are nice. They're a bit like communities on Pillowfort since they can be moderated but from a non-mod user, it's even easier to post in them: you just have to use the right keyword for your post to appear there. Well, if the mod left it open to all rather than chose to vet who can or cannot post in it. Lots of flexibility and control over your timeline overall.

I don't like the 300 characters limit, however. Never liked it with Twitter either. It's not really conductive to conversations, and the general design tends to make the website feel rather impersonal. It's really more like parallel talking than community building.

Overall I think it's a good tool to promote your (visual) art or website, etc. but not great for hosting conversations past commenting briefly what others are doing. I mean, you can make threads but it'll never be as good as Pillowfort or Tumblr for this.

► Dreamwidth: I'll start with saying that Dreamwidth isn't a social media, it's a journaling platform and I haven't used it much yet. Had in plan to post my headcanons about my muses there and stuff like that so I did spend some time trying to figure out how it works.

First, there is a lot of options to let you have complete control over who can see what. Like, a lot.

You can entirely personalize what your journal will look like. It's a bit easier than having your own website—since I reblogged a post about that yesterday—because you don't start from 0, so it might be a good option if you don't feel comfortable jumping into Notepad++ to start coding. You can just change a thing here and there, or nothing at all, or almost everything. It's pretty old school though, so for those completely unfamiliar with early/pre-web 2.0, it might not look very appealing at first. However, I'd say don't let that stop you! If anything, it's a good opportunity to learn a bit of code without pressure.

You can also create communities, which as you might have guessed is very important to me. When creating one, you can set up whether everyone can join, everyone can ask to join but has to be approved by a community admin or to limit the access to those you have personally invited. Like for your own journal, communities are completely customizable, and Dreamwidth allows adult content.

I'm not sure you can top DW communities in terms of functionalities—aside from making a forum—but it's not as intuitive as Pillowfort (though in exchange you get more customization). You're also more limited regarding image hosting (see here). That said, hosting services exist, many are free, and that's without mentioning that you can post on Twitter and the like and use the picture link in your DW posts. I don't think many will only use Dreamwidth anyway.

► Cohost: I was expecting nothing when I registered earlier today, but this is an overall good surprise: it's Tumblr, but better.

More control of what you see. More user-friendly UI. It's not fucking blue. Adult content allowed. You can change your main blog page and make it private.

The only two downsides I'd mention here would be that you can't customize your blog page appearance and you have to wait for one or two days before being able to post. Although if it means less bots, I'd rather wait.

And this ends my rather non-exhaustive tour of the social media/blogging/journaling platforms. If you catch any mistakes let me know. I didn't dive deep, this was just me sharing my thoughts.

(As far as I know, they all allow adult content and give you tools to not see it if you don't want to.)

[clippy]

Anyway uhhh if Tumblr does do away with chronological order I'll probably slowly leave entirely to be honest... As much as Twitter sucks, there is still an option to have some semblance of a chronological feed (under the Following tab over there but it sprinkles in ads and the occasional '____ liked this post'. And the site is run by Musk) but like.... Tumblr loves to destroy features when implementing new ones so I genuinely do not have a lot of faith

Some examples:

Blog themes; when converting to the more mobile/app friendly version of default themes, a lot of custom HTML themes broke. Customizing these themes is a pain in the ass. A lot of blogs on desktop, unless they have custom HTML enabled, no longer lead to a ____.tumblr.com URL and instead open a on-dashboard view of the blog (that comes in from the side and does not work)

Search and tags; previously, going to http://tumblr.com/tagged/____ would take you to a chronological feed of the tag and would pull up *every* post with that tag... Then it started including posts that included the tag's contents in the body, and now it barely works at all. Defaults to a "top" view that is seemingly random. Search function on blogs has never been perfect but now if a blog has selected the option to "not appear in Google searches", the search function on the blog no longer works. At all. Even trying to go to a tag on someone's blog through the app does not work because Tumblr treats this as a search

DMs; had to spread the feature "like a virus". Doesn't consistently work for me, personally (I get a lot of false notifications). Riddled with spam from the bot problem they never fix. Twitter has this issue too, though. Also they took away fan mail, which I KNOW used to be the previous "chat" feature (as someone who had to use it myself), but I'm sure some people would like it to be back to be a less formal thing than a DM, and fan mail can't be published like an ask.

And this isn't even getting into features no one asked for that are forced on us (Tumblr Live, big banner ads at the top of the dash that take up 33% of the screen in the app, etc)

Like the fact people still use Tumblr despite the site being held together with duct tape and a prayer is a miracle and it's 100% due to the structure of the dashboard that can be switched to chronological order and doesn't randomly change to the algorithm-based version....

[pintsizebear]

A quick guide on diversifying your internet use

Big social media is going to keep being disappointing because their wants and needs don't come anywhere close to aligning with their users wants and needs. EVERY big social media site or app will eventually misalign with its users, because having the entire internet's worth of people in one place is unsustainable for moderation and for financial reasons. It's an unavoidable fate for sites that are supposed to be the hub for everything.

It doesn't have to be that way. Start diversifying the sites you use BEFORE your favorite social media site becomes basically unusable or goes down completely. Take some power away from big tech corporations. Drag your friends into it too, you don't have to explore alone!

Here's a few examples of things you can do:

Join some forums There's forums for basically everything you can think of, from toy collecting, to discussion of specific disabilities, to gardening, to niche roleplay topics, and they've been running for decades so there's immense amounts of knowledge on them. Plus, people tend to be super friendly and welcoming of newbies, so you're likely to make new friends if you post regularly on them. Googling/searching for a topic + "forum"/"discussion board" (like "knitting forum" or "paper mache discussion board") will generally get you what you're looking for. Save your favorites and give them a visit every now and then!

Subscribe to some RSS feeds RSS feeds make it incredibly simple to get updates and news from your favorite websites, including a lot of social media sites! RSS readers + aggregators take the RSS information from your chosen websites (+ tumblrs, twitters, youtube channels, etc) and puts them into an easy to browse format, all in one place. Readers and aggregators are available as browser addons, desktop programs, mobile apps, email subscriptions, embeddable widgets, whatever suits your needs best. Your RSS subscriptions aren't subject to annoying, everchanging, unpredictable algorithms. They'll only show you what you're subscribed to and they'll be in chronological order. Most of them are completely free and have no ads.

Make your own website Having your own website fucking rules and you're fully in charge of everything about it. Make a blog, make an art gallery, use it as a personal image or video host, show your ass, who cares. It's yours to do what you want! Free web hosting: While free hosting is a lot more limited in what you can do, it's also much more accessible if you're not sure you want to fully commit to running a website or if you just want something to throw info on a couple times a year. A few popular examples are NeoCities (also offers a decent paid option,) Cloudflare Pages, and GitHub Pages (SFW only.) Paid web hosting: Paid hosting is generally better for people who are more dedicated to running a site, such as people who need a stable platform for work related stuff (artists, online stores, etc.) You'll generally want your own domain name (like youtube.com or wikipedia.org) which you can get at sites like namecheap, namesilo, or porkbun. Many webhosts offer free subdomain names (like how tumblr blogs are yourblogname.tumblr.com) but having your own domain makes it easy to move to another host if you need to without your url changing. Your choice of web host depends heavily on your price bracket, what you plan to use it for, features you need, if you need to host NSFW content, how much traffic you expect, etc. Contact the support team of any web host you're looking at to make sure they offer what you need before you buy their services. Shared web hosting (where multiple websites are hosted on the same server) is generally the cheapest and most accessible option for the majority of people looking to run a website. Unless you're planning on having several thousands of people on your site all at once on a regular basis, that's probably the option you want. Avoid anything owned by EIG/Newfold Digital. Self-hosting: This is the most complicated option, but also the most versatile. With self-hosting, you're only really limited to the laws of your region and the bandwidth you get from your internet provider, rather than the limits put in place by a hosting company. Take this option only if you're willing to set up a dedicated server and get into all the technical stuff that comes with it. Here's an okay guide for how to get started, though you'll want to do a lot more research beyond this.

[rogue-cumulonimbus]

I made a website. From scratch.

Spending time on the internet has become increasingly demoralizing, all the more so when I am trying to promote my work or engage with other people. Everything is ads and tracking and algorithms feeding me rage-bait and I'm tired of it. I am still active here on tumblr, and I don't think that will change, but for me tumblr is a largely passive experience.

So, website. Currently it has a link to my twitter (I don't post there but its sort of an archive of nsfw art I've done), my itch.io page (pornographic comics), and an in-progress "library" page with poetry, books I love, fic recs, and so on. Its a mess now, but it looks better every day.

I am having so much fun. I haven't has this much fun on the internet in years. Since I was a teenager, probably (2000s, I turned 30 this year!). Even if you don't think you would ever want to build a website yourself (its shockingly easy, and there are so many resources out there) I highly recommend browsing some neocities sites. It's a breath of fresh air in a web largely run by capitalists.

Also, if you look at my website: I love you.

[trekwiz]

I used Tumblr's feedback function about the recent changes. But, fuck, it was hard to get it short enough. It had to be under "5,000" characters--but the system's broken so it required me to get it to around 4,700. I don't think the short version makes as much sense, but I'll provide it under a cut. And I'll follow with a long version.

You want to drive engagement: that means being more fun than nuisance.

We hate snoozing Live. Disrespecting users' preferences and giving busy work means you'll never convert us to Live users: you've only built resentment.

Some users turn off push notifications for being annoying. What does Tumblr have that requires urgency? A friend who needs a ride to the ER is not asking on the fun meme site. When you push notifications, it's your decision to get my attention, instead of my choice. There's no way to spin this as a positive.

The persistent banner in "Activity" warning that notifications are off, is a rude reminder that you feel entitled to my attention. Your intention to SPAM users like me is worse, but we're the kind of users who are also motivated to click “Report Spam” to hurt your domain score in retaliation.

Users hate algorithms. Most users turn off “in your orbit” etc. They made your site harder to use--it's confusing and awkward to see posts of unexpected origin. I had a look at the separate feeds, but I haven't used them again. The chronological feed is more appealing.

Users don't want your vision of condensed reblogs. You'll destroy popular memes that only work in the current format, such as the speech bubble gag. You will lose users if this humor is tough or impossible. 2 better ways of rolling this out: 1. Offer it in the editor, like polls. Users will choose when threaded is better. 2. Offer a toggle on posts. This allows threads to be viewed when it makes sense.

Users like duplicate reblogs. This is social bonding, unique to Tumblr. duplicates show which mutuals share your tastes. The joke about seeing the same post shared by 5 mutuals is endearing, not derogatory.

Be more thoughtful with your ads. You have a lot of LGBT users. Why show ads from a hate organization like Chik-Fil-A ads? It's very offputting.

Don't "fix" the things you do well; improve where you're doing poorly.

Search needs work.

Users who remove their blog from search are confused when they can't use the search bar inside their blog. They turn on favorite tags which can't be used in that case. It would help to have an option to enable search only from within the blog.

Search is inconsistent. I can type a whole post from days ago, with no results. It's not clear why some posts aren't searchable.

I want duplicates in my feed, not search.

Sometimes I lose a post after an accidental refresh. An option to search blogs I follow would help.

Add search to the follower/ing lists. And if you follow someone called 1Funny1 now, it would help to know that they were NotJoking8 when you followed last year.

Fixing search might seem low impact. But it's probably the one thing that will stop users from calling the site broken. That will encourage new users to join.

We want a "mutuals" badge. You're mimicking the worst parts of social media, but we love friend lists. An indication of who's a mutual is helpful. It should increase engagement as well!

Your hate speech policy needs improvement. The bar to remove LGBT-phobic content is too high. The "mundane political speech" has deadly consequences. Allowing LGBT-phobic content if it's "not extreme" normalizes attacks on our human rights--you're influencing public policy by treating these ideas as if they're civil, despite the harm. And we deserve a place to escape the hate.

Next, there are better ways to spotlight content. You could build a tab for curation. 3 kinds: 1. Official Tumblr Curators 2. Sponsored Curators ($), and 3. User Curators. Users should be able to select which type they see at any time. This should include categories for browsing, and search. They should highlight bloggers, especially creators. This allows users to find new content organically, instead of being forced--this is a marketable feature.

For revenue: Editor+. A robust text editor that matches Google Docs, etc, with unique Tumblr enhancements, like a way to favorite gifs and emojis for faster use, and a meme generator--something that fits the most common meme formats but allows quick insertion of text and graphics. Those exist elsewhere, but integration is convenient. That means value to the user.

You should also leverage the Marketplace better. Gifting would be great for digital products. Send DoorDash gift cards, or gift an online watch party or music through Tumblr. The Marketplace is a lot more appealing if it can include useful services.

Closing thought: after a bonus at work, I was about to go ad-free. But the announced changes will be more nuisance than fun: I can't imagine staying here if you make the site unusable. These are obvious errors that will decrease your userbase, and it's surprising that you didn't immediately realize this.

[everythingshinesunderthesun]

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.

[supermo0]

Hot take: As a relative Tumblr neophyte, the announced roadmap-ish thing that Tumblr announced today doesn’t sound all that bad.

The difference between reblogs and replies is not terribly clear to people coming from other sites. You don’t need to break it, but it would be helpful to find a way to either better explain it to new users at a site level, or provide a functional difference between them. Right now, you have to rely on finding people who explain it (see below) and there are a *dizzying* amount of different opinions about how to use them! It’s really weird! You don’t have to find a tutorial to retweet posts on Twitter.

Improving the ability to follow conversation branches seems fun! It’d make more sense to be able to read the wider conversation around a post that you catch on your dash, rather than being stuck with the one sliver that you get reblogged.

And finding people to follow is another difficult thing! Believe me, I hate the “Best stuff first” feed as much as anybody, but probably for a different reason - to me, it just surfaces nonsensical posts, and it seems to wait 3 days to update which posts to surface. As a new user, I need to get my dashboard started *somehow*, and the search feature doesn’t work. Following tags makes zero sense if you turn the algorithm stuff off completely, but that’s also the easiest way to find a group of people who’re talking about things you like, or posting art about it, or what have you. Something’s gotta change on that front, and they didn’t really get into details, so it seems premature to worry about it.

Please, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying to blindly accept whatever slop gets handed over by the overlords. Healthy skepticism is fine. I just wanted to provide a little bit of a perspective. To me, it sounds like the heart is at least in the right place. I hope they execute on it.

[northropi]

So I'm going to be using this more, for real this time.

In an effort to Holy Fucking Shit They're Considering Cisgender A Slur Now What The Fuck, I am soft-leaving Twitter. For real now. What do I mean? I will not post anything "directly."

I'll still like, follow, reply, retweet, whatever, but any media or in-depth text (so like also media) will no longer be natively placed on Twitter.

From now on anything I put on Twitter will be links to other sites.

It also seems inevitable at this point that I will eventually have to leave Twitter entirely because harassment is becoming more frequent.

While I'm not big enough to be readily targeted, bigots are trawling the trending tab to find anyone who comments on a recurring topic and start gnawing them.

I've never been a full "no ethical consumption under capitalism" person, but up until this, I could at least blow Elon's bigotry off as "oh, so we happen to have a bigoted owner on this site, well not gonna pay his ass so I'm fine in the short-term." But this policy, which seems to have gone through, is probably the first time something actively bigoted and not just generic right-lib "hey we should let bigots talk because censorship bad" has been written into the ToS.

To strongarm Cis out of our vocabulary leaves us with no words to describe Cis people exclusively (which is itself a pretty damning reason why it's not a fucking slur, but I don't think at this point that anyone who says they think it is is doing so in good faith). We have to use the word bigots want us to use to describe cis people.

Normal.

And every time we speak it, they'll lick their slimy lips and relish in the implication that, by exclusion, we have admitted we are not.

BlueSky likely will mark the end of Twitter being an even neutral space for vulnerable people in terms of community, though maybe I'm talking out my ass there because I hear some shit about BlueSky too- so sub BlueSky for whatever more solid Twitter-style multipurpose high-throughput platform follows and actually is good if I have to eat those words, I guess.

It, or the hypothetical next thing, will bleed Twitter of users who are, you know, not fucking horrible, and in turn, create a selective pressure that turns Twitter into a decidedly bigot-friendly site. This is the cost of being run by someone who thinks "free speech" should mean taking the wrong answer to the paradox of tolerance, and an idol to rightoids and conspiracy theorists who need that "gifted" Christ-figure and a supposed force of opposition to exist, even if they have to rip their brain in two to characterize that opposition as the establishment while, being conservatives, every single stance they take is pro-establishment.

You people ruined schizoposting, you know that?

Newgrounds will be for images with occasional text updates, this for long but relatively rough posts, Wix for more encyclopedia-style content as I intend to use it in a wiki-like capacity with secondary blog purposes (why not use wiki for that, you ask? because it looked like a lot to learn up front and there seemed to be like twelve different wiki formats, Wordpress/Wix was just easier but might change later).

I'll also aim for some filler on Youtube in the form of just video game clips so I can feed the algorithm a bit and try to be more active in exploiting what free time I have to actually use my mic for voiced stuff including, possibly, short streams, though that begs the question of where I'll be doing those.

As for Tumblr, a friend offered me to help me learn its syntax or whatever you'd even call it in this case to get it formatted. I wouldn't count on it replacing Newgrounds yet and that may be my primary art site from here on out (I've expressed concern about their harsh policy against WIPs and certain modeling programs that might include my VRoid work, but the latter would obviously be fine here and the former can still be posted in a publicly accessible capacity to NG, just not promoted in the art portal- hopefully I get "scouted" there sooner than later but nothing is a dealbreaker yet). The problem ofc is because, well... First off, NSFW. "Oh but you can post-" yes. I know. You can do some lewd stuff and fetish content fine as long as it doesn't hit a particular bar of "non-artistic" nudity. However, a lot of my stuff is raunchy fucking hypercock bellybulging cum cum madness. I can't just fly under that restriction and not need to eventually find another outlet.

Second, I really gotta handle these fucking bots. Not sure how many I have still as I imagine a lot are getting cleaned out by mods, but it seems follower notifs on this site have been going into junk for a while due to sheer frequency.

I'm also thinking about if I have it in me to forgive DeviantArt for their AI debacle, but the site's stance on it is concerning and I fear that there's at best going to be a ton of it flooding the site, which, while acceptable if they hold their promise of being able to opt out future works (remember, the opt-out doesn't apply to any works put up before- you can't un-train a neural network, so fuck that sideways), will be frustrating to interact with. I'm also going to look into ArtStation a bit, I recall them doing something dubious but I'm not sure of the status of it since. I actually already have an account there, for Project G.L.U.T.T.'s demo mostly...

[theabstruseone]

Counterpoint: The game has been out for just over one calendar month. In 2023.

First off, all the references you're talking about for Skyrim and Fallout 4 didn't pop out fully formed immediately after release. It took years for all of those to solidify into the memes and cultural touchstones they ended up. Not only did people need time to play the game for themselves, they needed time to talk to other people about the game and share their experiences and find the similarities between playthroughs that popped out to most people. There really has not been enough time for those moments to show up.

Second, it's Two Thousand goddamn Twenty-Three. I don't know if you've noticed, but the world isn't the same as it was in 2011 and 2015 when Skyrim and Fallout 4 respectively came out.

For one, you're over a decade older. I'm not going to speculate on OP's age, but I'm going to take a wild guess and say likely in their 20s or 30s. Notice that the big touchstone moments are all from the most recent games released - Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76. No mention of Oblivion, Fallout 3, or Fallout New Vegas which also had their share of memes and shared moments. So OP was likely in their late teens or early 20s when Skyrim and Fallout 4 came out. A time in people's lives when they tend to have more free time as they're either in school or still early in their professional lives. That means not only more time for gaming but also a social circle with more time for gaming. As you get older, that sort of free time evaporates quickly due to other commitments and responsibilities so squeezing out a few hours a week to play a game is a luxury. For massive, spawling 100+ hour games, that means far fewer people in your social circles have likely gotten very far into the game to hit those moments.

For another, the social landscape has changed. You probably don't talk to at least some of your old gaming friends because they've gone off the political deep end and every conversation with them is about some uncomfortable talk about current events or social issues you don't want to confront them over. Or they tried to hard sell you on NFTs or cryptocurrency or a protein shake MLM or something.

Online communities have been broken up due to algorithmic manipulation on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok. If you're not already looking for Starfield content, the algorithm isn't likely to feed you more of it. And if you're not engaging with the content that is there, fewer people are going to see it. And that's not even getting into the problems with communities broken over the years with the loss of forums, Vine, a huge amount of the Tumblr userbase, the people fleeing TwitXer, and so on.

Meanwhile, the people who were making the sort of shitpost content that spawned these memes in the first place have been effectively drowned out of sites like YouTube due to the algorithm and the flood of shittily-made clickbait content.

And on top of all THAT, there's been a massive anti-spoiler cultural shift over the past several years. Big open-world games like Starfield are few and far between outside the repetitive "climb the tower" Ubisoft-style games and the majority of the fun of those games is exploration. The people playing those games want to experience that exploration and discovery for themselves before engaging in videos and discussions about them. So people have been rather good on avoiding spoilers...which slows down the development of the sort of memes and in-jokes because nobody's talking about it yet.

It's kind of funny to claim a "Fall of Bethesda" when the game managed to top sales charts for multiple storefronts including Steam even though the game is free with an Xbox Game Pass subscription. Enough people still bought the game that it was not only the best-selling game on release but was only beaten in concurrent players by Counterstrike (because nothing's going to beat Counterstrike).

Compare that to the similar open-world, exploration-focused game Baldur's Gate 3. That game's been in early access for 3 years and been out for over 2 months and literally the only memes are thirsting over the companions. Even the bear-fucking preview video fell off the cultural radar around the time the game actually came out.

And finally, my third point...Starfield was the smoothest, most bug-free launch of any Bethesda game in decades. Sure there are still little physics bugs here and NPC pathing issues there, but the sort of game-breaking, quest-softlocking, crash-to-desktop type bugs that came at launch for Fallout 3/NV/4/76 and Elder Scrolls Oblivion/Skyrim have been pretty absent. And a LOT of the early funny clips and comedy moments came from those hilarious bugs. Since there aren't any major bugs to laugh at and make compilation videos of, a lot of that early memeing just isn't there.

If you don't like Starfield, more power to you. Not every game is going to be for everyone. Go find a game that will be more fun for you. But it's frustrating and annoying when "I don't like this" isn't good enough and people have to pull out complete nonsense like this to somehow prove it's objectively "bad" and that all the people who are enjoying it are having fun wrong.

I think the biggest sign of the grand “fall of Bethesda” or whatever is the fact that Starfield officially released a full calendar month ago today and I literally have zero idea what it is about or what happens in it. absolutely zero cultural osmosis seems to have happened, which would’ve been unthinkable for a Bethesda RPG like ten years ago

[no1noman]

Alright, new pinned post

So I'm making this as an egotistical introduction to myself and my interests. I like games a ton, I'm taking a college course on marketing and advertising, enjoy art and animation (although I don't do either), and I'm using this blog to vent thoughts I would rather keep off of my other social medias (mainly because Tumblr is pretty dead and doesn't algorithm what you say into stranger's faces as much)

If you want to know some of my favourite games;

Plants vs Zombies. I'm obsessed with this whole franchise and have played basically anything they've released internationally. I mainly play PvZ Heroes, which is a game I DO NOT recommend playing at this moment (or any moment, really? Unless you're willing to do morally grey things [I.e. hacking in resources, which takes a 10 minute YouTube tutorial to complete]) due to an ongoing and likely unending hacking crisis. It's also really hard to get into unless you have someone explaining everything to you, mainly because the base game does nothing to teach new players anything beyond some of the basic game mechanics and arguably does more to feed new players misinformation. There's also a lot of bugs, balancing issues, a severe lack of features (including there being no report button), and lots of other issues. Regardless, I have a lot of fun with this game and it has a iron grip on me

Skullgirls, which isn't a game I suck at and don't actually play often, but have put dozens of hours into regardless. The art style is what initially hooked me in, as well as its mostly-female cast and the intriguing story. What got me to stay was the amazing gameplay, one of the best tutorials I've played for a fighting game (although it's also quite flawed nowadays due to its difficulty at some points), and a very in-depth training mode. Favourite characters are Filia (I love playing as her and she has a neat design), Peacock (not as fun to play, but still very fun and her design absolutely rocks), and Painwheel (she's too hard for me to play, but is otherwise my #1 favourite character thanks to her design and story alone)

Rayman Legends, which is probably weird to have for a favourite game, but is one of the best platformers I've played and overall a very fun and replayable game. Other games like Celeste, Cuphead, and Super Meat Boy (the third of which I still need to play 😭) are probably better, especially in the case of Celeste having a very good story. I think what Rayman brings to the table is its triple A quality, having a ton of polish, lots of levels, plenty of game modes, and overall does a lot of things games with a smaller budget couldn't imagine doing without spending over a decade of time

Slay the Spire and Dicey Dungeons, which are both really great dungeon-crawler deck-building rougelites (StS is technically a rouge-like, but it takes such little time to unlock stuff and what you do unlock are cards and relics; not things like permanent stat buffs that simply make your next run stronger). Slay the Spire is pretty much the grandfather of deck builder rougelites, but has aged immaculately despite that title. Meanwhile, Dicey Dungeons plays with the formula by having you roll dice instead of drawing cards, and those dice are used to activate your cards like mana would. Dicey Dungeons is a much simpler experience than Slay the Spire, but I wouldn't say it's better for that and Slay the Spire is a more worthwhile experience

Some other games I think are cool are;

Drone Head, which I've been playing a lot of as of recently. It's an arcade platformer made for a game jam about a small robot jumping everywhere to collect weapon cubes, which change the weapon of your attack mode. It's super cute, very addicting, and overall a lot of fun: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/800211

Tetris, which is maybe the only game on this list that you recognize besides Plants vs Zombies (or you live under a rock). While I wouldn't say I'm good at the game, I've noticed that the average person isn't close to my skill level, so saying I'm bad at the game would also be a lie. I typically just play Jstris's practice mode, but I've also done 1v1s on Tetris Effect and played the battle royal modes of Tetris 99 and Tetr.io (which kicked my ass)

Peggle, which I feel like people don't talk about. It's a crime considering both Peggle games are fun and well-made games. Peggle 1 is a masterpiece and ironically has much more content, while Peggle 2 has its own unique charms and, in my opinion, a more fun PvP mode. I also regularly listen to Peggle 2's soundtrack, with some of my favourites being Jimmy's theme, Bjorn's scntfc remix, and the pvp lobby music titled "Eau de Bjorn". Most fascinating part of the soundtrack is that each character's theme is a classical piece remixed to be a soundtrack that transforms as the level progresses, which is really cool and makes the game stand out a lot more. Peggle Blast was a mistake

Toontown Corporate Clash, which I admittedly haven't touched in months, but is still a game I would recommend people play. If you don't know, Toontown Online was a game released by Disney way back in 2003 and was promptly shut down 10 years after. However, fans of the game would begin to create private servers of the game modded to their preferences, and one of them happens to be Corporate Clash: A heavy rework to the game's combat and progression. It's so good that playing solo is quite rewarding, but like any MMO, is more fun with friends (which I lack 🙃)

I'll continue updating and adding to this post over time, but those are a lot of the games that have my attention rn

Not sure what else to add to this post, honestly. I guess I could also talk about what non-gaming media I'm into or actually talk about my own life, but that's stuff I may add later since idrc to talk about that stuff right now

[twilightzebby]

Just because I can, here's a list of what I like about Cohost vs Tumblr 🙃

Good things about Cohost

It's run/developed by like 4-5 peeps and thus they actually care about their userbase

Cohost won't mistreat their employees via underpaying & random lay-offs :)

Cohost is basically created by us queers, for the queers /pos :D

You can do funny CSS crimes on Cohost in your posts

They have a dedicated custom content warning area for posts

They allow for completely muting specific content warnings and/or specific (hash)tags, so any posts with those muted warnings/tags will not show up on your feed at all! :D

(They also allow for "muffling" those too, so you can still see said posts just covered behind a click-through)

Your funny CSS crimes can also be done on your own profile page too, for maximum silliness :)

Cohost only has 1 algorithm - show posts from people and/or tags you're following in order of when they're posted. No data-collecting-powered algorithms like on pretty much most other social medias

Cohost doesn't have the issue of bypassing your tag filters via pay-to-promote-post systems (-glares at Tumblr Blaze-) because they don't have such systems at all!

Cohost staff are refreshingly transparent about site issues and updates. and also their finances.

There's no fluffing adverts.

You can silent individual posts (preventing them from showing up again on your feed), which also hides any repost ("reblog" as it's known on Tumblr) of that same post!

Their dark/light theme system is so powerful that you can even set individual posts to be dark or light, independent of your own browser/system/account settings! Great for funny CSS crimes that change depending on the theme of that post!

Cohost likes being sillier than Tumblr, and such taught me about the existence of the .beat timestamp format via adding it as an option for their "Cohost Plus" subscribers (which is only $5/month or $50/year)

They added an "Unverified" icon for those who are clearly not representing companies (like on the Nintendo Cohost profile)

Other then that, there's no profile badges at ALL. Which I'm happy about as it means Cohost doesn't have to suffer "badge hunters" (or as I call them, "badge gremlins") like what Discord has (even tho Discord is a chat app not a social media shush)

There's probably more that isn't coming to mind right now lol

Good things about Tumblr

I'm literally only staying here for the memes and Mewtwo comic artists. 🙃

[stew-chan]

idk long rambling post because I'm tired

tldr I hope the Tumblr changes don't mess up the site too badly because there really isn't another social media site left I'd enjoy at this point and I'd miss parasocializing with the other weird queers on here

talk of Tumblr using an algorithm feed and seeing examples of the pure algorithm of threads and the mostly algorithm of TikTok makes me worried for the future of online stuff.

logging in here for the first time and having a whole endless feed of randos right away is such a weird concept. making posts for a faceless group of people who maybe might see your stuff is such a weird concept. I mostly post for the couple of mutuals I have and reblogs things I enjoy. I already have to block maybe a third of blazed posts because they're either posts from fandoms I don't care about or it's shitty hetero porn or listen to my SoundCloud or check out my fantasy adventure romance fiction where the girl saves the prince! (buy on Amazon)

idk really where to go if Tumblr gets too fucked up. the for you page is already like half good half junk and prioritizes the source post cutting off any useful commentary or funny reblogs which is like half the reason I'm even here.

if this site becomes unusable like legitimately what's left? twitter is a broken right wing hell hole now where 'cis' is a bannable word. Facebook is just data farming and forces you to be a person and not just an account like here. threads is endless machine slop and super data farming 2. insta is for celebrities and influencers and is mostly pictures so that's also useless. is Myspace even around anymore? not using TikTok because I hate heavy algorithm and video only.

would we just use the site and try to ignore the changes like we do with Tumblr live? my mutuals are a lot of mutuals with each other so maybe a large discord is a possibility?

idk if this site falls apart it might be the end of social media for me which is probably healthy but I'd also feel really lonely and isolated not being able to pseudo-socialize with all the trannies on here. I have like one irl friend who's also a Tumblr poisoned queer but she's mostly cis so it's not really the same as a lot of y'all that can personally understand my feelings and struggles because you dealt with similar stuff.

idk I know staff doesn't actually care what most of its users think but I just hope this doesn't break the site I actually enjoy being here which is impossible to say for the rest of the social media landscape

[omamervt]

one thing you hear about all the time from people when you're trying to make it big is that you want people to discover you "organically."

since... geez, I wanna say 2015? probably earlier but I'm usually the last person to notice trends changing... Anyway since social media more or less replaced casual web browsing, organic reach hasn't really existed, EXCEPT on sites like Tumblr. Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, even YouTube, they're fighting to take your ability to curate your feed away from you, and as time goes on, it just gets worse. I often can't trust YouTube to give me videos based on my specific search terms anymore. Even when you randomly find things on most social media, you can almost be certain that you only found it because The Algorithm decided you should see it, even if you didn't ask for it.

But here? you have a chronological timeline that's ACTUALLY chronological. And it'll show you what the people you're following have posted. It'll show you what they posted even if five of them reposted the exact same thing, and they all accidentally hit the reblog button twice, resulting in you having to look at the exact same image 10 times in a row with no interruptions.

But every time one of those guys reblogs it, there's a chance that it gets put in front of That One Blog and escapes containment. It wasn't chance, it wasn't algorithmic intervention, it was a picture shared from one Guy to the next until the next Guy just so happened to have 200 active audience members, some of whom also had 200 active audience members.

I hated Tumblr back in the day when organic discovery was possible elsewhere, but now that it's the best option for it? You bet your ass I'm on board. Plus we can still embed audio and external video over here, Facebook took that away forever ago and Twitter basically never had it, at least not as well.

Alright, I think I like tumblr now.

A pun post crossed my dash, and I reblogged it with an equally bad pun in return. A couple of my followers find it funny, it's a good day for everyone.

That was on July 7th.

Virality on Reddit was entirely algorithmic. You could garner a couple crossposts, but the success of a post was entirely dependent on whether or not it hit r/all--the main page of Reddit. If your post does that, it's immediately exposed to 10x the number of people and immediately gets upvoted.

On my pun post, I get a couple reblogs. And those reblogs get a couple reblogs--nobody really adds any content to the post, it just gets a couple reblogs here and there.

There's a specific chain of reblogs that I'd like to focus on. The most popular post on this chain has about 25 reblogs on it. Half the posts have three reblogs or fewer. Five posts in this chain have just one reblog total.

But the reblog chain keeps going. And going. It breaches containment many times over. And finally, after a chain THIRTY SIX posts long, at 9:30 AM, July 22nd this morning, it hits a popular account.

99% percent of the people who have seen the post--virtually unchanged from how it left my dash--have seen it because it was curated by 36 different people. That's insane to me.

None of those 36 people know that they're part of this chain. They saw a post, reblogged it, and moved on. If any one of these people had not reblogged, the post would have a fraction of the impact it has.

And yet, after two weeks, the post has effectively hit the main page of tumblr. It was picked up, only because people liked it enough to show it to their followers. There were no algorithms necessary.

You really, truly, cannot get this on any other website.