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.
Maybe I’m a cynic but here’s what I’m getting from this, and it’s not great:
Tumblr is probably going to start even more vigorously restricting site access to users who are not logged in, even on personal blog pages (they have started doing this, with the non-dashboard url being turned off by default, and the way a few posts of scrolling will bring up a blocking screen). This will destroy the ability to use tumblr as an actual blogging platform.
Tumblr is going to lean more heavily into algorithmic feeds, meaning that our dashboards are probably going to be interspersed with more “recommended” posts pushing bullshit we did not ask to see into our feeds to “deliver the most engaging content”.
Replies/reblogs are going to be reworked and flattened. They say this is to make conversation threads less confusing, which in theory I’d be all for, but I’m not sure I believe that this will be implemented in a way that is friendly to how people actually use the site. It might make it harder to get a good overview of post notes. So, not terrible but I am wary.
Tumblr has confirmed above that they will be attempting to remove duplicate reblogs from your following feed, meaning that you won’t be able to see from looking at your dashboard when/if your friends have reblogged a thing.
All of this, of course, is being done to try and increase “engagement” and sign-up metrics at the expense of their existing userbase, because in our current economy a product cannot exist in a static state, it has to chase the numbers to the bottom.
Fuck capitalism and this site, honestly. They have such a good thing going at the moment where this website is an actual usable platform and they’re rushing to “capitalise on it” by enfuckening what’s good about it.
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.
Hey @staff have you guys heard about this neat feature called “reblogging”, it’s a great way for blogs you follow to share content from new and smaller creators, plus it’s free and easy to do
