“The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use.”

Tumblr plans to make changes to appeal to new users and improve growth. The post states that Tumblr is currently difficult for new users to use and curates content poorly. Tumblr aims to improve how users discover and sign up, encourage frequent engagement, and boost creators’ ability to attract audiences. Specific changes mentioned include updating the confusing reply and reblog system to make conversations clearer and removing duplicate reblogs. Interestingly, the post does not discuss Tumblr’s plans to integrate with the ActivityPub protocol. Tumblr has had a turbulent history but has stabilized under its current ownership, though some long-time users may not want a more optimized social feed.

There’s a soft spot in my heart for Tumblr. I hope they find their way and become a bigger player.

  • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    21·
    1 year ago

    Unfortunately, this is what always happens when you entrust your content to a corpo. Is there no fediverse alternative to Tumblr?

    • zeus ⁧ ⁧ ∽↯∼@lemm.eeEnglish
      20·
      1 year ago

      i don’t think there can be. tumblr’s draw isn’t any features it has (apart from maybe homepage customisation, but you get that with a website) it’s the features it lacks (algorithms, etc). and it’s the community, which was curated by a lot of coincidences at the right time.

      you’d need to get everyone to up and move at once, with the ability to reblog posts from old tumblr. i think it’s unreplicatable

      • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        9·
        1 year ago

        all these features and lack of featurs you can get with fedi software. The need for your friends to move so you can move is understandable, but eventually Tumblr will become so painful to use, the decision will be made for you.

        • zeus ⁧ ⁧ ∽↯∼@lemm.eeEnglish
          10·
          1 year ago

          nah, i don’t even really use tumblr because it is so painful to use. actually, it was their link shortener that was the last straw[1]. i’m just saying i don’t think it’s a site that can ever exist again.

          reddit is just a link aggregator, that’s easy to recreate. twitter is just individual paragraphs, as long as there are people any site will work. tumblr is so broken that it’s used exclusively by people who started using it in the 00s, when it was popular, and never left. they’re not really what i’d call friends, more monkeys in a zoo to laugh at. but as it’s so broken and opaque to start using, it was never marauded by children; so everyone on there is in their 30s but pretending they’re not.

          it’s a coincidence that can never happen again, as any alternative site would first be used by techie early adopters, who would be on average younger than most of the tumblr userbase. maybe we’ll get another tumblr in 10 years though

          1. and the fact that they convert every bleeding image into a webp ↩︎

          • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            8·
            1 year ago
            and the fact that they convert every bleeding image into a webp ↩︎

            TBF, that’s actually good. .jpg and .png are ancient and .webp is way way better. The fault is not .webp, it’s browsers and clients which stubbornly refuse to support it.

            • zeus ⁧ ⁧ ∽↯∼@lemm.eeEnglish
              7·
              1 year ago

              i personally have had no compatibility issues with webp - i would just rather my image formats are not owned by google, really. i would much rather use jpegxl, but chrome doesn’t support it because it competes with webp and we couldn’t have that, could we.

              but also it’s that webp only works if you convert to webp manually, i find. their automatic conversion just ruins the colours (particularly on pixel art). plus, i do actually prefer png. i can edit what i want in a hex editor, whereas i can’t seem to do that with webp.

              i have a browser extension that refuses webp, so i get served png where possible; but i can’t make sure that images i upload are served as png for others

              • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                3·
                1 year ago

                i personally have had no compatibility issues with webp, i would rather my image formats are not owned by google, really. i would much rather use jpegxl, but chrome doesn’t support it because it competes with webp and we couldn’t have that, could we.

                I mean, why do you even use chrome if google is your problem? :D

        • zeus ⁧ ⁧ ∽↯∼@lemm.eeEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          it’s such a shame. i used it despite the interface; but even if some site perfectly recreated the interface on a federated version, it wouldn’t be the same. most of the older users wouldn’t switch, and it’d be filled with non-tumblr early adopters

    • PotentiallyAnApricot@beehaw.orgEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      That’s absolutely true. As someone who’s hung around there since 2010ish, trust is too strong a word. But it does make me sad. If there is an alternative, i’ll happily start using it. But it’s specifically the other people there and the things they do, far more than the platform itself, that I love. If it does all go to hell, I’m sure that people will talk about where they’re going and I can follow. It’s just such a distinct place. It would be the end of an era if it went the way of instagram or twitter.

    • Atiran@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      I have not looked into it or anything, but I think a tumblr alternative would do very well on the fediverse. I think it could even be better for self-hosting than Lemmy.