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quisby.net

15th May 2009

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Directory

I stayed away from the Tumblarity conversation on Tumblr — except for one justly criticized post — this long for a few reasons. Only one of which needs to be articulated here.

I actually like Tumblarity. I think it’s a great at-a-glance indicator of how well your blog is doing. That kind of feedback isn’t too important for this blog — I do this purely for fun — but I have rather more grandiose visions for Tuneage and Word Journal, and it’s nice to see when the effort I put into them isn’t wasted.

Of course, that isn’t Tumbalrity’s main purpose, which is where my objections arise. And today’s launch of the new directory just solidifies something a lot of people on Tumblr suspected from the launch of Tumblarity: that Tumblr is being turned into — in the simplest possible terms — a popularity contest.

It’s unfair to criticize the directory too harshly right now, since Tumblr have been clear that it’s still beta (I can’t think of a technical reason for this, so I’m assuming it’s so they can gauge user feedback and act accordingly, but maybe I’m just being cynical), but here are some thoughts I’ve had.

The directory is being touted as a way to find blogs that are “gaining momentum”. But how does listing the most popular 7 blogs in a particular category help anyone except the popular people? Sure, you can click “more” and get a full list, but it’s still weighted so that the popular people are at the top. And anyone that’s been on the web for a while knows that a) most people won’t click “more”, b) of those that do, most people will not get very far down the full list. (“Why should I care about anyone with only 1,000 Tumblarity when all these awesome people have 10,000 and up?”) And as a result of that, the users in the top 7 will succeed in getting even more popular, and everyone else will squander.

I think letting users tag themselves is also going to be problematic in terms of the directory’s usefulness. I’m looking at the top 7 music blogs right now, and only one of them appears to be an actual music blog. Audio posts are a feature of Tumblr, so why the heck wouldn’t the world and his wife tag their blog as music? That, in turn, dilutes the quality of the music community, and makes it essentially pointless. I can no longer go to the music listing to find music blogs, unless I’m prepared to wade through numerous blogs that just happen to post music every now and then.

Limiting the number of tags one can apply to their blog was smart, because it will force users to think more carefully about how they want to be represented, but most blogs, I would guess, do not have more than two main areas of interest. But even now, with a two-tag limitation while the directory is in “beta” mode, I can already see that that’s not nearly enough. And it still allows one more tag to be applied, that probably won’t be very relevant.

Another thought: anyone that’s been on Tumblr for a while has probably noticed a few trends. Think soft focus photography and inspirational quotes. The nature of the Tumblr community means reblog-bait like that will do much more for you than original content will. Is that the kind of community Tumblr is trying to foster? There are four instances of original content on the popular list right now (and numerous instances of unattributed non-original content), so maybe it is.

More fuel for the popularity contest debate: what happened to the themes, map, and trends links? They’ve been reduced to tiny links in the footer. How many times have you looked at the footer? Would you even know where to find themes if I hadn’t just told you? It’s pretty clear that Tumblr aren’t interested in promoting talented theme designers right now.

While I’m on the subject, the Theme Garden is still more or less useless: the featured themes haven’t been cycled in forever, the “popular” themes are mostly just boring default themes, and new themes are very irregularly approved (I know of two people that have seen themes approved into the garden while theirs continue to squander in a moderation queue somewhere). (FYI: a number of people have asked me to start updating Custom Themes again, but I handed that over to Simen a while ago, so that’s his call.)

Another thing: Why are the only users advertised in that promotion spot on the directory celebrities or already very well known blogs? I thought we were promoting lesser known blogs, not celebrities.

Another: Blogs marked as NSFW (check your customization page if you haven’t found this feature yet) are flat out not allowed in the directory, it appears. The TOS states that all users must be over 18 (yes, yes, we all know most of them aren’t), so why? The option might as well be analogous with the “promote me” option. I’m sure they plan to do something more useful with this in the future, but right now: broken. (And I know Tumblr probably don’t want to get anyone fired from their job, but what’s wrong with a simple indicator of NSFW-ness, instead of total banishment?)

It would be reasonable to give Tumblr the benefit of the doubt for now, since they’ve been clear that the directory is in beta, and will no doubt undergo some changes. (Although Tumblr have been pretty persistent in not bowing to the huge backlash over Tumblarity, so perhaps it won’t.) But it marks another step in a direction that I — and apparently a lot of others — don’t like.

I love Tumblr, and almost everything about it. I love the fact that, despite numerous feature additions — some of which are great, some of which are not — they’ve stayed on course as the simplest blogging option around. I also love that Tumblr is run by exceptionally smart people. As long as that doesn’t change, I’m not going anywhere. I’m just curious about what exactly Tumblr is supposed to be.