#corporate nonsense

[eldritchboop]

One of my New Year's Goals is to start disconecting myself from Corporate Platforms (tm) like Facebook, Youtube, and Amazon. I realized I have a lot of my life stored there that I'd lose if they went under, and TBH that makes me uncomfortable.

First step is to backup my facebook and save all my tagged photos. I've got a new external hard drive coming to use as general media storage, so that will all go there, and my normal external will just be for system backups.

Small step is to start moving all my Goodreads and Libby data over to Notion libraries. Yes, Notion is still a company and it still does Corporate Things, but it's also easier to download all the data as .csvs to keep a copy safe. That's my main concern - I want to be sure I have access to data if the site that's hosting it decides not to any more.

Also, I'm really tired of being treated like a salable commodity instead of a human being, and this is my little push against that.

Later I'll work on my favorite YouTube ASMR audios so I have them locally and don't have to get interrupted regularly by ads when I'm relaxing for bed.

Any other advice of things to cache so I don't end up losing them?

[lastweeksshirttonight]

hello! i'm not sure if you've seen this clip but

i am on a Disney semi-rabbit hole (which i don't approve of for myself, don't worry) and i just found the first 30 seconds of this interview hilarious.

it's like—he enjoyed the gig and did well at it (clips of him BTS are much more lively than these ones) but he just can't be arsed to be corporately passionate about it for promotional purposes.

My response to this is so fucking late, I'm so sorry my dear

Firstly, here's the video:

I also adore how much bullshit he's spewing out in these clips, and how he is actively to the camera's face saying that he's doing these as a promotional requirement. The bold faced lie of John watching The Lion King as a kid was also absolutely hilarious. (For background, The Lion King came out when I was a kid, and I'm fifteen years younger than John.)

I do like this quote from John, which is very much the ethos he pretends he has with comedy: "We tend to favor structure in lieu of having an emotional reaction to anything." Much like John claiming to be "allergic to sincerity", this isn't entirely an accurate view of himself.

Thank you for the ask <3

[christophoronomicon]

@staff reblogging for the comments, to which I wholeheartedly agree, not the original post which is bullshit corporate nonsense (and not liking this post against my normal habit in order to prevent @staff from getting the wrong idea). I've been on this site since 2014, and it's been my main social medium from the moment I've been on here. I literally spend hours per day on this site, despite its malfunctioning mobile app and its constant attempts at self-mutilation. There is no other social medium where I spend any time on. I'm not on Instagram. I'm not on Tiktok and will never be. I'm only on Facebook so I don't miss my friends and family's birthdays. I'm on LinkedIn because of work but never use it. I'm probably going to leave Twitter very soon and haven't actually used it in years. I may have a Reddit account, can't remember. I'm on a couple of Mastodon instances but even those don't even register as a blip in terms of time spent on them.

Tumblr is literally the only social medium I use. At all. And I use it because of the features @staff is in such a hurry to destroy:

a fully chronological dashboard with only contents from the people I explicitly decided to follow, without any algorithmic bullshit;

reblogs that are their own posts and allow pretty much all the creativity this site is known for to exist (the whole "yes, and..." culture that created such gems as Goncharov would simply not exist without reblogs! Why destroy the one and only thing that made Tumblr relevant in media in the past few years, and likely made enough people aware that Tumblr was still around for them to choose this place as refuge when Twitter and Reddit started to act up? Reblogs is why you're having new users in the first place!);

A feeling that the people posting here are actual human beings, not corporate shills (what other social media call "influencers").

Remove those things, replace them with cookie-cutter corporate social media crap algorithms, and Tumblr ceases to exist for me, and I will leave. And I will do my best to convince everyone to do so as well. We'll find other places to interact. As others wrote, we'll survive without Tumblr. Tumblr won't survive without us.

Your choice @staff.

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.

[glitterandmoondustofficial]

My toxic trait is when my boss wants to order lunch for our department, he gives me his company card info. I order from places that have a point system if you create an account. I log in to my personal account and rack up points for free food.

Oh, you want pot belly’s? Great! Let me just login and get 11 points per $1 spent! We spent $60 in food! That’s great!

[the-random-hamlet]

Not Mine. Thought to Share.

[bembely]

Guys my work compliance training is so inclusive there is now dude on dude sexual harrassment

[dennysbathroommetalband]

*shaking and crying and throwing up and debating Sylvia Plath-ing myself*

“TGIF Team! Is it a full moon today? 🤪”

[radioluminescentoblivion]

Omnisoft brings you the next step in AI evolution, the AIECU (Artificial Intelligence Elite Combat Unit) will provide a safe future for the world of robotics. with superhuman capabilities, heightened reflexes, incredibly durable armour, environmental reading, and most importantly, a state-of-the-art CPU that will revolutionize the field of AI forever. Although the CPUs aren't close to representing the minds of humans completely, it won't be long until they behave similarly to us. With Brazin and Zozi, you can count on Omnisoft to protect your most valuable assets from danger of any kind.

Here’s an AU of Brazin and Zozi, when will I make em like this again? Who the hell knows.

[ailurinae]

LMAO

Also, in 2013 could 1.1 billion even have bought Netflix or Hulu? Obviously couldn't get remotely close now… was a different world back then, but still not sure it would be enough though.

Well… in 2012 might have been about half its value.

Hulu isn't an independent company, but this article from 2013 suggests ~1 billion might have been not unreasonable for Hulu https://seekingalpha.com/article/1475391-hulu-buyout-could-expose-extreme-netflix-valuation

And why did the value plummet, Marissa? Why did it plummet?

[umblrspectrum]

i dont like this and its so obscenely rushed but i wanted to atleast post Something before release

[linu-sfrblog]

[sarasa-cat]

Hm... How does that saying go? Something about how the road to hell is paved with (so-called) good intentions?

Yeah, yeah, now rather than end this with a cover your ass statement, why not stand behind your words of apology with actual service to the communities you've hurt?

Scholastic blinks

Via Cole Haddon on Twitter, who summarizes: “‘We did not anticipate authors and other reasonable people would take issue with our totally well-thought-out plans to segregate the stories of people of color and other marginalized groups away from the books that make cishet white people feel the world was made just for them.’"

[charcubed]

oh everyone and their DISCLAIMERS about how “lokius will never be canon because disney and marvel are awful, but”........ well I have nothing to lose so. fuck disclaimers! this is my idea of fun! what if it CAN and WILL be canon, huh? what if the story is gonna go where it seems to be headed. what if I say they’re going to kiss on international streaming television. who’s gonna stop me

[geometryyaoi]

made Nothing There in spore

[askanofficemom]

A lot of this is turnover! You have to keep retraining people, of course, and you have to have ENOUGH people to rotate the training.

Or as the adage goes, "What if I train my people, and they leave?"

"What if you don't train your people, and they stay?"

Illustration of adage:

“Thank you for holding. We are currently training your customer service representative, who will be with you as soon as possible.”

[draykin2]