#props to her

[endlessthoughtsanddreams]

Tbh I feel like Rin isn’t given enough props for being like 12 and doing a dangerous surgery for an eye transplant mid-war. Honestly that’s a horrific situation and she did really well considering that Kakashi had basically no damage besides a thin scar.

[i-am-a-living-god]

Steven: sings sweet song to his girlfriend.

The entire fandom: audible cringing noises, straight up dying.

[themakeupbrush]

Cécile McLorin Salvant at the 2023 Grammy Awards

[awesomechocolatesauce]

So, I decided to look up the actor who played Ethan, just to see if he's been in anything else I've seen, and saw "Main Role" listed in for the character of Ethan.

Um...WHAT? How was THAT a main role??? He was barely in the show at all, we've learned very little about him, and then he disappears after Devi breaks up with him. I forgot he even existed until Paxton brought him up.

That was definitely not a main role. He was literally just there to be a "bad boy" phase for Devi and to distract herself from Ben.

[eightestalde]

Just finished TDR's finale and.... wow, I totally don't expect this to be so emotional..

On one hand, I'm mesmerized. This is such a beautiful start of a love story. On the other hand, I'm afraid of what's to come, since their story is somehow so similiar with the desert rose's legend?? 🥀

[kittanthalos]

My therapist literally told me to watch Willow during our last session and was surprised that I haven’t seen it. And now seeing how queer it seems I’m laughing my ass off. She knows how queer i am/i go to her for a lot of queer issues so she was basically gently telling me to watch gay shit 😂😂😂😂

sdfkjsldf your therapist is probably the coolest person ever!! recommending things she thinks her patients would like? yeah, that's called investment in their well being. i'm glad she recommended the show to you, how are you liking it so far?? have you finished? tell me all about it :)

[raspberryluvr]

I say this to myself in the mirror twice daily:

“Word of my exploits serving Nick his comeuppance has seeped into the demimonde of mobs and molls my father used to associate with, so the five families are sending their youngest and brightest, their ‘princes,’ as it were, to, well, come court the rare mafia princess who can belly up to the bar with the big boys.”

[randomjreader]

I really am obsessed with Wednesday's dance from episode 3 (or was it 4? Can't remember too clearly). I keep seeing people on tiktok do it and it just looks SO GOOD? Jenna did a great freaking job

[local-demon-in-your-area]

My aunt her wife and their son found out a stray cat had a litter in their basement and took care of them.

There were four kittens and they decided to raise them before giving them our to their friends, while keeping the mom nearby and taking her in if they could.

Three of the kittens have been given already (they raised them for a few months before giving them of course) but the last of their friend that was supposed to take one in was a bit of a red flag and wanted an indoor cat which the kitten wasn't (as she was raised by a stray cat and spent plenty of time in their yard) so my aunts decided to keep the last kitten (mind you they already have two cats and a turtle, three if you count the mom).

The friend had named the kitten Yumi but since she's not taking her in they decided to rename her.

And of course, my aunt (and godmother) is the one that named her.

Meet Bonus

My aunt thinks she's funny (she is)

[the-lonelys-special-little-boy]

I just got a porn post on my dash, and i go to block the account but i see the girl in it was wearing a hijab?? Like stark naked but hijab still on.

[cordspaghetti]

The twin devils, humbled by her blunt force trauma

[toohottohoot]

so does this mean you’re becoming more like other social media platforms??

I’m being legitimately honest here. Are we Tumblrinas going to have harvested information?? Tldr; what’s changing?

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.

[i-miss-music-247]

To the people who do nails the minute before an event, how the hell are you guys doing?!?!?!

[anneapocalypse]

So, just curious how many writers and creators will have to be forcibly outed by relentless harassment before we acknowledge that "This queer characters was written by a cishet person and that's why they're bad" is not good criticism.

[eightestalde]

Just finished TDR's finale and.... wow, I totally don't expect this to be so emotional..

On one hand, I'm mesmerized. This is such a beautiful start of a love story. On the other hand, I'm afraid of what's to come, since their story is somehow so similiar with the desert rose's legend?? 🥀

[houkagokappa]

Not a day goes by without me running into homestuck somewhere