Althouse: 5 reasons why Yahoo will ruin Tumblr...

May 20, 2013

5 reasons why Yahoo will ruin Tumblr...

... and the argument to the contrary.

22 comments:

rhhardin said...: I don't even know what tumblr is. Mark it down to lack of curiosity.; 5/20/13, 7:10 AM
Palladian said...: Yahoo! ruins everything it touches.; 5/20/13, 7:13 AM
rhhardin said...: Yahoo's flickr has lots of bugs in software and no apparent ability to program it correctly.

Namely you may have to upload a video a half dozen times before it succeeds.

Youtube never has a problem even with much longer videos.

So whatever tumblr is, yahoo has incompetent programmers to ruin it.; 5/20/13, 7:14 AM
pm317 said...: rhhardin said..
-------------

It is a blogging tool like google's blogspot. But it is very lighweight, simple to set up and keeps your anonymity -- you don't have to use a handle to identify your blog other than just the title of it. Its main draw was to post things straight from your mobile phone to your blog -- very convenient when you're traveling on the road with just your phone. Hey, you might as well check my tumblr, :) which I use to post my mediocre pics It never got picked up by a crawler, so nobody knows it even exists. But yesterday, I noticed I had a follower that I don't know who he/she is.; 5/20/13, 7:24 AM
Nomennovum said...: My 14 year-old daughter is pretty freaked out by the acquistion. It was from her that I found out about the acquistion.

I surmise that this is a website used mainly by adolescent girls.; 5/20/13, 7:26 AM
madAsHell said...: I'm not sure it's just Yahoo. I think it's any large organization. I know I prefer to work in small businesses (under 50 employees) where you can see your results, and people are fired for not meeting goals.; 5/20/13, 7:36 AM
Ann Althouse said...: You can blog via phone on Blogger too.; 5/20/13, 7:39 AM
pm317 said...: For the tumblr guy and his users, it was all about the ads. Ads not cluttering the pages, ads not being as cool as the user's original content. I agree with him -- ads are a menace. But without where is the revenue and growth? That was his big problem.; 5/20/13, 7:40 AM
madAsHell said...: Some recently minted MBA will attempt to "monetize" the activity on tumblr, and at the same time, ruin the user experience.; 5/20/13, 7:42 AM
pm317 said...: You can blog via phone on Blogger too.

But tumblr was the first to do it.; 5/20/13, 7:42 AM
pm317 said...: Here is the thing. When I look at tumblr, Google, (God forbid) facebook, twitter, I see a gaping digital divide between the right and the left and especially among young people. That is very troubling to me.; 5/20/13, 7:47 AM
ken in tx said...: I thought Tumblr was mostly for porn.; 5/20/13, 8:02 AM
edutcher said...: 5 is the biggest one being mentioned, I've noticed.; 5/20/13, 8:10 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "But tumblr was the first to do it."

Was it? I don't know. That's been a feature for many years.

In any case, what does it matter who added the feature first.

I think the main thing about Tumblr is that it has a more static overall look to the main page, less of a feeling that it flows in time, which makes it better for people who don't update constantly and just want a page.

I could be wrong about that. I've looked at Tumblr and I've tested the Blogger features that make a Blogger blog display like Tumblr and it's not something I'd do with this blog, where the feeling of continuous flow is a big part of the experience.; 5/20/13, 8:19 AM
Ann Althouse said...: Lifehacker said: "Tumblr is a free social blogging platform that's designed to take most of the effort out of actually blogging. Initially, blogging meant writing. On Tumblr, it means sharing something cool that you found online and occasionally attaching a caption. That doesn't mean Tumblr can't handle original content as well, but it's not designed for anyone who is looking to create a long-form blog. If you simply want to share neat stuff and have a social network built-in to your blog so you can easily interact with other users, Tumblr is the way to go."; 5/20/13, 8:24 AM
pm317 said...: In any case, what does it matter who added the feature first

Yes, it matters. Since it was the first to conceive of that idea, it has a huge mobile following which is why Yahoo! wants it. Tumblr is like an art gallery -- you can't compare it with blogger. It is a different motivation to interact with others. For instance, when I set up my blog, I didn't want to bother with comments, and tumblr was perfect. I think people like the lightweight notion of it.; 5/20/13, 8:26 AM
MadisonMan said...: That would've been a much better list if they'd put it on Tumblr.

Since it's just print, it comes off as people writing stuff who don't get it.; 5/20/13, 8:46 AM
Smilin' Jack said...: "5 reasons why Yahoo will ruin Tumblr..."

Isn't that kind of like saying that Justin Timberlake will ruin Myspace?; 5/20/13, 10:11 AM
Paco Wové said...: I could never 'get' it, either. It seemed to be a mass of nearly content-free blogs, all referencing each other.

That, and the vowel-hatred turned me off.; 5/20/13, 11:46 AM
Paddy O said...: What Palladian said.

Yahoo!'s whole business model seems to be based on becoming really big early on in the Internet, then since then buying up other companies, ruining them, subverting progress, then ending them. Yahoo! really liked the 1990s and thinks the Internet needs to stay that way.; 5/20/13, 5:44 PM
Jason (the commenter) said...: Did not realize Althouse was interested in tumblr. Does she have a blog there?; 5/20/13, 6:42 PM
Jason (the commenter) said...: Althouse: I think the main thing about Tumblr is that it has a more static overall look to the main page, less of a feeling that it flows in time, which makes it better for people who don't update constantly and just want a page.

tumblr is about pictures, lots and lots of pictures. Sometimes they're edited or animated or have little descriptions written next to them. Sometimes they're grouped in little arrangements that complement one another. It's visual rather than literate.

Instead of a post on why someone loves a TV show, the post might consist of a few beautiful screen grabs.

Or shots from a movie with dialog added, like a comic strip.

And tumblr users like looking through their streams (all the blogs they follow added together) and scrolling through the pictures, reblogging the ones they like. For hours at a time.

And occasionally there's a penis.; 5/20/13, 6:55 PM