#because this genuinely set me off

[hamtigers]

I’ve been here around 12yrs, and when the first attempt at an algorithm was tried, I was among the majority that immediately turned that shit off Tumblr is a blogging site masquerading as a social media site. Not an actual social media site. Control over your feed is essential to keeping what it actually is. It is one of the last bastions of “old internet” where the user actually feels in control of their experience, rather than being fodder to generate clicks and ad revenue through and algorithm.  We like that we curate our feeds, that we get to actually SEE what the people we CHOSE TO FOLLOW are posting without it getting shuffled or drowned out by an algorithm-driven feed!! It’s not hard to figure out how to fill your dash - just search for things you like, browse someone’s blog, and if you like what you see give them a follow. But y’know, with making it increasingly difficult to view peoples actual blogs instead of the neutered mobile-friendly version lately, a lot of the individual user personality is being lost. I hate that I can’t use the little corner tab to direct link to a post on the desktop version of someone’s blog anymore, I have to use the share button that takes you to the mobile version unless I wanna dig thru the blog itself to find the post manually. If you’re so worried about new users not knowing how to use the site bc they’ve been raised on computers doing the thinking for them, then give new users a built in tour that explains the functions. Don’t change the #1 thing that has kept old users like me around, even during the great exodus of the NSFW ban. (Nowhere was better, bc it was all algorithmic fueled bullshit making it impossible to see what I wanted)  Hell, fix the search function if you want creators to be able to be found!! Searching and using followed tags (an old feature that got nuked btw) was how people USED to build communities on this site! People would even make up the most inane bullshit tags to use as a community because they’d all follow it and thus get notified when a friend posted something! (My old skype group used to use “responsible adult problems” since we all met thru this site) I don’t mind the idea of threads in the reply function tho. That’s honestly fine. I hate when someone @s me in a reply but it doesn’t fit in the notification, so I have to take a wild guess at what post it was on, find it, and then scroll thru the replies to see what they were trying to tell me. Which is hell on a viral post. So yes, communication via replies is legitimately clunky as it is if you’re not the OP.

Being able to mute notifications on a post so that you aren’t drowned when it gets popular is also good. And should’ve been made a feature a long time ago tbh. But man, I hate that tumblr live was brought up as an example of the path moving forward. Fuck tumblr live - let me disable it permanently instead of having to go un-toggle and re-toggle the snooze once a week. The reason people have so much vitriol towards it (myself included) is because it’s the first time a new feature has been introduced that felt invasive and forced. Normally whenever something new got rolled out, unless it changed a core aspect of the website like the formatting of the dashboard, users had to the option to switch it off. But tumblr live for some reason has this ‘temporary’ disable that if this is really the route this place is taking, I’m expecting to eventually not even have that option anymore. Fuck an algorithm trying to show me what “25″ posts it thinks I need to see instead of my actual dashboard. When twitter started going more aggressive w/ their algorithm because they wanted their ‘best stuff’ to be viewed first, all it did was hide art and personal posts from friends of mine that weren’t popular, and shunt everything that was already viral to the top of my feed. And then they started putting peoples likes on my feed, completely removing the point of having the difference between likes and retweets. And then it started putting shit that wasn’t even interacted with in my feed, because apparently twitter thinks that I want to see stuff from people I don’t follow just because someone I follow follows them. If I wanted to see it, I’d be following them too! It drives me insane! Literally the only reason I haven’t quit twitter entirely with the fall of tweetdeck (the only way for me to view that dumpster fire in chrono reliably) is because I follow a lot of artists and friends on there that aren’t here on tumblr and I have 0 interest in any other ‘alternatives’.

Hiding duplicate reblogs isn’t the worst thing at surface level, except when you remember that a huge part of the culture here is “talking in the tags”. I personally find an appeal in seeing me and my mutuals all getting excited over the same post, but I can see where that would be redundant to others. So personally, I would want that to be a feature that could be enabled if you choose, not something forced on me. TL;DR if you really are so worried about the new user experience you better make goddamn sure that any changes can be PERMANENTLY opted out of by your existing users. Otherwise you’re going to drive away long-time users, especially those in fandom spaces, in favor of gambling on new ones.

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.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

MDZS x Brazil (1985)

(Yes. Real movie dialogue)

[lexosaurus]

If you're only commenting on a fic to ask for an update or worse, to be passive-aggressive about wanting an update, then please do both yourself and the writer a favor and don't comment at all.

Saying things like "Can't wait for the next update!" as part of a comment about how you enjoyed the chapter is one thing, but just going into the comments and being like "Where's the update?" or "You haven't finished writing the next chapter yet?" or something similar is not only rude, but also I ASSURE you it only serves to make the writer anxious about writing at all.

Fic writers are not content creators. We're not robots. We're real people with careers, families, and other irl responsibilities. Writing is something I do in my thirty minutes before I go to bed to wind down from the day. Whatever I want to write that evening is what ends up getting written.

So by making me anxious and putting pressure on me to update a fic, especially in that passive-aggressive way that so many people do, all you've ensured is that when I open up my folder that evening to see what I feel like writing, my eyes will completely skip over that WIP that I got the rude comment on that day because I Feel Bad about it and now I don't want to even look at it.

So please, just follow the golden rule of "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

[barksbog]

i found a thrown off slow worm tail yesterday. it makes sense they can do that because they are lizards but it's still wild!

putting it under the cut for mild gore

[alongtidesoflight]

i swear my stepdad is so illogical AND stubborn it hurts

[shakingparadigm]

horrendously sick and twisted btw

[p1zzaparty]

Dennis the menace vs Bart Simpson…u get it dude

THANK YOU KAT HHAGFKJG i had no other way to properly express it..

Obviously there's more personal things i enjoy with them in the 80s compared to the 50's, i effin love the 80's!!!! As a concept!!! Not the getting called a fag for breathing bits!!!

However i get peoples preferences for the losers taking place in the 50's vs the 80's. I have big feelings about the modern remakes and what they did right and how MUCH they did wrong. But i loved it personally, the losers to me always felt perfect as 80's nerds who were outcasted before nerd culture would become beloved. The peak of science fiction, pop culture, riding off the coat tails of Disco and Jazz as New Wave begins to take more of a hold. The Talking Heads, The Go Go's, The Police, MEN AT WORK. Granted this is also a good argument for them being adults at this time period, i just prefer them being kids and growing up with peak geek. It would become almost a sore spot for most of them, seeing how accepted nerdy shit is now. Imagine getting bullied for being a Star Wars fan just to see people praised for their sexy jabba the hutt cosplays now. AND BEFORE ANYONE CORRECTS ME the same thing can be said about the 50s and the rise of comic books and more dorky culture. Stan in his little boy scout uniform?? So cute and so essential in establishing his raw dorkness. But i still lean towards them in the 80's and their own individual nerd fandoms. I've actually got a project ive been working on with them in their little nerd fandoms 😭 Richie obviously was a Star wars kid Eddie was heavily into Star Trek and thinks Star wars is a cheap light show trying to copy the popular show at the time Bill is into dnd but after Georgies death his love for it begins to taper off, he does host a campaign every now and then when the inspiration strikes Stan has started to enjoy Thundercats as it premiers the winter before that awful summer And the group makes obvious Heman references all the time and have arguments over which Marvel character each person in the group would be (Which again could apply to the nerd group of 50s losers) I am in full agreeance that they botched the losers badly in the modern remakes; Ben?? Mike?? Bev?? Its not even funny how badly they were written. I could write a badly written novel about how much they fucked up Mike and Ben. But i still have such a soft spot for the modern remake. They feel more like jerk losers in the 80's, like kids who are bullied and because of that bullying have built a sort of defense mechanism to be pricks back. I would love to have seen more of the micro details King writes for his characters in the modern remakes, but i understand how difficult that is to express it in the movies. Though, personally, i'd watch a 5 hour long movie of The Losers just doing stupid shit to build their character

also im so sorry Kat you got me going and i had to write 30 paragraphs but THANK YOU 😭

[thedrotter]

i depend on you (based and very much inspired by @/sometimes317 's piece on twitter)

process pics in read more!!^^

you can tell the moment it struck me that i was practically drawing ship art www

[krotiation]

this soundtrack genuinely makes me so emotional like damn. the jack vs fiona scene at the end of ep 2 is already so perfect and then they had to go make this beautiful as hell ost with it too. those bastards

[emoticonnie]

Sometimes people care to much

[anotherpapercut]

the girlbossification of ruth bader ginsburg has to be one of the most just plain annoying aspects of white liberal feminism. like it's not as actively harmful as a lot of other shit obviously. but it is soooooo annoying. if I never see another notorious rbg tote bag as long as I live it will be too soon

[magiefish]

>Moves to university

>Has to get a room

>Specifically asks for a ground floor room

>Does this *specifically* so that their stimming doesn't disturb other people (I pace and jump around sometimes)

>Again, does this *specifically* in order to be considerate of other people trying to sleep and study

>Moves in

>The person upstairs is the loudest bitch in all of Christendom and all her mates are too. They have parties every Friday.

[gemharvest]

Hate thissss I feel like I haven't been properly productive today (somehow posting two art things Doesn't register properly in my mind) so I wanna stay up to get as much as I can down, but I also need to go to sleep in case I'm called in tomorrow because fuuuuuck going to work on little sleep that shit sucks. But also, the possibility of being called in makes me wanna stay up even more, so I can finish art in case I don't have time tomorrow. So now I'm sat up at 12:30 tired as shit but unable to draw or go to bed. The never-ending cycle of hell.

[aceofwands]

idk man I just think of all the franchises you could try to make the Next Big Thing by creating a bunch of new shows and movies, maybe don't pick the one with the notoriously nitpicky obsessed with canon fandom ?? if you don't plan on applying any sort of consistency to the world, characters, alien cultures, entire ethical and moral framework of the universe, etc etc ????

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

The infusion place I went to offers gender affirming infusions but they aren't EXPLICITLT FRAMED THAT WAY which makes me worried that it's only for cis people lmao. I probably won't ask about it until I've been back a few times lol, but I'll probably get around to it once I've stabilized broadly. I've got my script supply still so I'm not in danger of going untreated, but I'd love to have a place that's willing to just monitor an injection program under informed consent alongside my other infusions.

[thevioletcaptain]

.