unfuckwithable.ca

annicka:

i know it doesn’t matter 

but what really bothers me about this whole post-it thing

is that it represents the organization’s unwillingness to explore tumblr’s potential 

i love tumblr so much. so much. it is one of the most important things in my life. no joke.

it has given birth to some totally unique interactions and behaviors over the past five years

but what has tumblr actually done to encourage that growth?

or even provide a basic search function so that researchers like me can begin to understand the breadth of these new behaviors and communities?

to me, that’s a total waste!

that’s a total waste of five years worth of data that now represents a gigantic black hole of understanding 

it’s really a bummer to watch them (tumblr leadership?) willfully deny the opportunity that it holds in terms of both development and research

being an effective and engaged tumblr user is basically to be a fish swimming upstream against all of the inefficiencies and psychodrama either ignored or created by the staff

No, annicka, it does matter, and you’re right about everything.  Some of these ideas to make money (which Tumblr obviously needs to figure out how to do before this becomes a glorified Pets.com blog…or MySpace) are really gimmicky and don’t take into account of the super limited attention span of most of the Tumblr user base, not just the OG or the heavy users.  The only pay feature I ever used was when you could buy a directory ad for a few bucks, because it got me exposure/page views/followers when I wanted them.  It fulfilled a need I had, it was cheap, and it was well worth the money spent per follower or whatever metric I was using then.

I’d like to see more interaction and to make it more of a community, which to the staff’s credit, they’ve been moving towards.  I follow a ton of people, a ton of people follow me, but there’s a core group of people that I either already interact with through here, or via Facebook/IM/email.  It would be interesting to see some kind of feature working that in - I really don’t know how to describe what I’m thinking of here.

I’d be more than happy to pay $10 a month or so for an advanced Tumblr experience: better uptime, more (useful) features, the ability to upload more than one mp3 per day, etc.  I already pay hosting fees for server space and I have to use that if I want to add more media or perform functions that Tumblr can’t handle.  Yes, I love it’s simplicity.  But an advanced version with lots of tools and gadgets would be nice too.  Believe it or not, some of us on here are good at the internet.

Innovate correctly, or die.