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.
I really wish they’d give us an update on that ActivityPub support. It’s been so long since they’ve even mentioned it
Here’s a Masto post from an ex-employee:
Thinking about making a “I was part of the Tumblr activityPub federation project ask me how it ended” t-shirt and wear it on my PFP here.
The CEO posted this reply to Twitter, acknowledging that Meta had beaten Tumblr to the Fediverse.
Here’s a screenshot of a post suggesting it’s not a high priority.
And that’s why corporate media will always suck.
Does this feature help our users? Yes, but does it make us more money? No. So we’re not doing it.
Absolutely miserable that they would do this. You just can’t ever replace, or replicate a place like Tumblr. Tumblr isn’t for people who want well curated content. It’s not for people who want a website that works all the time or makes sense. It’s a dense forest you’re supposed to wander and stumble through, and in the process you see things that you would absolutely NEVER get the chance to see otherwise, if you hadn’t been walking in that particular place at that particular time. It’s spectacular, and so specific, and the reblog system is a huge part of that. I’m sad about reddit and twitter, but tumblr is MY house, damn it! Stay the hell away from my unprofitable weirdness hive.
Unfortunately, this is what always happens when you entrust your content to a corpo. Is there no fediverse alternative to Tumblr?
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
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.
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
and the fact that they convert every bleeding image into a webp ↩︎
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.
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
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
All of us in the tumblr community are fuming, the only reason why tumblr has survived all this time is because it is different from other corp social media. If they follow through with their plan to turn tumblr into a twitter/tiktok copy, I will move completely to the fediverse equivalent (Calckey is almost perfect, if just needs to let me follow hashtags)
