#im sure theres more in here

[mysticsoldiersailorhylia]

I have been active on this site for ten years. There are some things on this post that I would like to see happen, and many things I would not like to see happen.

I agree that basic site and app performance, as discussed in Principle 6, needs improvement. I admit I have grown used to the app crashing or bugging out, but that doesn't mean it isn't an issue. And I can see how new users wouldn't put up with it.

Updating the search function, as discussed in Principle 2, is something users have been hoping for for a long time. I can't say much for how you plan to update it as you didn't give many details, but there are countless posts detailing exactly how we, the user base, would like the search function to work.

The rest of the changes outlined in Principle 2 leave me wary at best. The golden part of this website is that it doesn't function like other social media. It doesn't push content on us based on what an algorithm thinks we might like. I recognize that for new users coming from algorithmic social media, Tumblr would be confusing. But it is my sincere hope that instead of changing to look more like other social media, you implement a Tips or Tutorial function for new sign-ups that explains and shows new users how to curate their dash. Tips and Tutorials aren't alien to younger generations (we have seen them on other websites as well as in videogames), so new users will understand how to follow along. And an easy close or skip function will allow those that understand Tumblr to merely move past it.

If you force an algorithmic view, pushing suggested posts to the top of our feeds, you will alienate the loyal users that have been here for a decade.

When I first joined in 2012, I followed the suggestion from Tumblr to follow topics that interest me. This means that I occasionally get posts suggested for me based on my interest in that topic. These posts have never been intrusive and have always been the extreme minority of my dash. I do not mind seeing an occasional suggestion that is tagged with something I like (ie music, science, or animals). If I have ever wanted to see more of a topic, or find new posts, I have gone to the search function and discovered new things that way (to the best of my ability given the current functionality). I do not want an algorithm to do that work for me.

I do not want my dash to become half suggestions, half posts of people I follow. I have left other social media sites for catering that kind of experience.

Please leave the suggested content in a separate place. Those that wish to explore new things can click over to that dash, and those of us that want to curate our own experience can feel safe in knowing that our dashboard is filled with the content of those we follow, presented to us in chronological order.

I am uncertain of what exactly you wish to achieve with Principle 3. Once again, we are discussing changing the website for the ease of new users. Putting aside the fact that this would force existing users to learn a new system, causing confusion on our end, you are once again overlooking the option of educating the new users via Tips, Tutorials, or a great FAQ page.

I have seen many Tumblr veterans create Tips and Tutorial posts, and I have seen new users send Asks when they are confused about a feature. Once things are explained, they understand and have even gone on to praise the way our posts currently work.

Much of your language in this section is vague, so I am doing my best to infer what you mean, but it almost sounds as if you intend to make reblogs and replies into their own, separate posts instead of comments and additions on the original, singular post. I am envisioning the way that you can retweet on Twitter, creating a new tweet that quotes the original tweet. I fail to see how this would improve our ability to view conversations, so I hope that I am wrong in my interpretation of your words.

I truly do not understand what you mean by removing clutter by collapsing reblog threads.

As for removing duplicate reblogs: Please do not do this.

I enjoy seeing multiple people reblog the same thing. It's fun to see two strangers, for all intents and purposes, who only have me as a follower in common, enjoy the same thing. Especially when I also enjoy it. That's one of the charms of tumblr. And it is perfectly in tumblr's nature for one person to reblog the same post five times in a row. That is one of the ways we can express ourselves, and we do it because we want our followers to see it. If someone finds it annoying, they should scroll by or unfollow that person. Do not silence our voices by hiding our reblogs.

Regarding the lack of feedback discussed in Principle 4, I argue that it is less to do with users only seeing posts from those they follow on their dashboard and more to do with the lack of search feature functionality and lack of information for new users on how to spread content (reblogging versus liking). I want new creators to get their content out there. Content is what makes this site go round. Tumblr is the Fandom website and the great thing about fandom is that it keeps creating new things. There are new people that want to engage and create, and people that have been in the fandom for years that want more. And we go looking for it as best as we can, given the current functionality of the search feature.

Forcing content on us based on an algorithm is not something we want.

I sincerely hope that you look at all of the feedback you are receiving. New users are important in keeping a site going. But the current users are important too. And we are begging you to listen to us.

Tumblr has been the joke of social media sites for many years. But the fact of the matter is, when other sites became unusable due to hostile algorithms and greed, those users fled here. Because they see that Tumblr isn't an algorithm-based website. That's why they are coming to us. Your current users don't want many of these changes, and I hazard the incoming users don't either.

Don't ruin Tumblr.

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.

[nyxofdemons]

IT'S THE WAY THEIR INTERNAL WORLDS BLEED TOGETHER. the way blitz still looks up at him, still in front of him and bathed in light, but the way they're on equal ground this time; there's no pedestal. the golden chains forcing blitz away from stolas vs them dragging blitz to him in truth seekers. stolas on his knees looking up at blitz (the moon) vs blitz on his knees watching stolas. the way that stolas has the freedom to fly after the moon vs blitz being chained down and unable to reach for him. the golden feathers. insane

[kiivg]

.wardens are frequently secretly fond of each other.

[stealingpotatoes]

im meant to be doing my degree but instead i spent like an hour making the worlds most confusing family tree. what is wrong with me

[shower-phantom-ideas]

Danny is just a kid ya know? Like he is just a little guy. A baby really. 14? Tiny child! Look at him, he needs to be protected. Someone has to help this poor little dude. I mean he forgets to use his own powers to avoid attacks all the time.

Anyway cut to Batfam not knowing all of Dannys power set cause the lil dingus keeps forgetting he can do that stuff in the heat of battle.

Danny uses his invisibility all the time… to avoid being followed. But in a fight? Oopsies hes too busy thinking of funny one liners to realise he could do that.

Intangibility? Give the guy a break. I mean who calls themselves condiment king. Even he was stunned.

He so rarely actually uses his biggest advantage powers that the League doubt he actually has them. He, like any naive child, trusts them and reported fully on his power set. Instead of just asking him to demonstrate his powers they instead start watching him and try to find evidence of his powers.

At least they know duplication was true since they watched him make a copy of himself to go to the bathroom and not miss any of his fav tv show.

[luck-of-the-drawings]

EDYN TIDESTRIDER, CHALLENGER OF THE UNDERSEA, RIVAL OF THE DEEP. WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOUR BROTHER WAS CHOSEN TO BE A WEAPON OF THE GODS? HOW WILL YOU UNDO WHAT THEY HAVE DONE TO HIM?

[nullyisgoinginsane]

"We're special, Case"

[drawing-kitty-ckristal]

Owl yuan

First time drawing birbs n feathers

I realy like how it turned out

[saltseashark]

famblies (found or otherwise)

[cozylittleartblog]

diversity win your spam emails are queer

[cyberdragoninfinity]

buncha arc-v dimensionswap doodles!!! cuz this AU is still doing unfathomable things to @zxal and i's brains

+ some of fusion!Yugo's monsters....funny puzzle beasts and a really fucked up dragon :]

[ch1zzie]

The original in the bottom

Plus the picture I mainly drew but decided to draw the rest for funny

[ryvdraws]

his tboy swag and autistic coding have captivated me sorry

[skrrtscree]

Woe ryomina dump be upon yee 💙💛

[infamouslydorky]

I have a few thoughts on Mael Stronghart's overall character design, particularly his clothing

His overcoat looks to be a combination of a clergyman's cossock and a trench coat (shown below)

His waistcoat is also low-cut, which, while fashionable now, was unheard of in Victorian times unless it was specifically for a dinner suit and wearing a starch front shirt or shirt with a "bib" (also shown below)

You see, here's the thing: men of the time did not show the white of their shirt when going outside because that shirt was essentially considered their underwear, so the waistcoats would go almost to the neck with the remainder of the shirt being covered by a kravat. It was widely considered indecent to have shirts so openly exposed

Basically, what I'm saying is for Victorian standards Stronghart dresses like a slutty priest.

[ganondoodle]

actively fighting a full blown panic attack born out of sadness and anger after having to drive by yet another victim on the side of the road

it makes me livid how accepted it is to just let cats suffer and die disgustingly horrid deaths and live awful short lives just so what, for what?? so you dont have to play with them for an hour a day??? when i was little it was just kinda normal that they disappeared at some point, i didnt understand what it actually meant until our outdoor cat i loved dearly was found in the bushes near our house in a condition so horrible my dad has never told me and i have never dared to ask, she only made it to 6 and had horrible scars and infections before that i allowed my family to convince me to let my first own cat outside, we only had her for a year, she died at only 2 years old, i am still suffering from the guilt, it has never let me go, she went missing for a week and i walked the entire vilage up and down every day, yelling her name, wandering into the forest alone, talking to every stranger i met until one morning my mom told me that our neighbour who works for the city asked if we had a white cat with a very specific collar she had- he found her on a busy road crossing in the next bigger city, i never even got to bury her, its haunting me, the thought of her wandering lost and scared in the city for a week until meeting an awful end gives me headaches, the fact that i was the last one to see her alive, that i put her outside bc we were late for school and had to leave quickly, that she had come home with oil in her fur from crawling through maschines and cars before, that i was worried but still didnt act, that it is my fault, any time i am up to late its coming back, it will never let me go, if i had stood my ground and not allow her outside unless on a leash or similar shed still be alive today, any time i read a description at our local shelter it comes back, they still advocate for outside cats, all of them, even if they have only been an indoor one before, its madness my older sister had a cat, i dont even know how old he got but it wasnt long either, he got hit by a car in front of their house, she has two now again and the only reason she hasnt let them outside is because they havent shown much interest in it, i tried to warn her before and she didnt listen and shes still resistent, even after losing one too

i have seen so many on the side of the road, anywhere i drive i see them, i cannot forget a single one, we are surrounded by farm land and all its giant maschinery, its still common to poison rodents, why do people value them so little, you wouldnt let your dog just live outside in the woods and streets for half the day or more, you wouldnt just throw your guniea pigs on the road and tell them have fun, you wouldnt just let your bird roam outside, there probably assholes that do that too but you cannot tell me its as common as outside cats

i dont understand it, i dont, i wont, i never will, i will never forgive myself this poor little animal that was my responsibility having to pay the price of my ignorance, or my own weakness letting my family convince me despite the awful way we lost one before, it makes me want to explode it hurts my brain in grief and anger i can barely contain

cats deserve to live a safe and long life, i get only having them inside may feel like you are locking them up, but do you think that not doing so is worth having them die a painful death? being poisonend? on purpose even by disgusting people that hate them? abused and chased by other animals and dogs? hurt and lost? cutting their lifespan in half? if they even make it that far? the amount of wildlife that they kill unnecessarily so when all of that is already in a steep decline everywhere? and if they eat what they hunt get infected with diseases or again, poison? die somewhere in agony? if cared for they dont care about going outside, plenty can be leash trained or given a secure way to roam like those cat proof aviary like things, if you dont want to put effort into caring for a cat DONT GET ONE, ALL pets require adequate care, and if you think cats are the easiest bc you only have to feed them every now and then IF they come home? you suck, you are an asshole, i hate you and you do not care about them, if you just want to occasionalyl feed and pet an animal go to the petting zoo

(this is about pet cats of people who can absolutely afford to keep them healthily inside, i know feral cats and those in poor neighbourhoods are a thing, even if not here where i live, and thats a whole other but still similar problem and not the point of this post)