philippos42 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
philippos42) wrote2014-01-09 05:25 pm
philippos42) wrote2014-01-09 05:25 pm
Entry tags:
Things about Tumblr that do make sense
misterandersen suggested, "Things about Tumblr that do make sense."
Wow. That's harder to pin down for me. Do I want to just mention innovations of Tumblr, or also things it did right like other sites did right? A bit of both, I guess. Let's just dive in:
One: Drafts. I love being able to start a post, save a draft, and come back to it later, then post it however I want. This is probably rooted in Tumblr not being a dated diary format, unlike LiveJournal, Dreamwidth, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. Tumblr builds webpages that don't need to be timestamped. They're very mediated webpages, but they are webpages.
Two: The queue. Instead of posting everything when you see it, you can stick it in queue and let it post sometime in the future! There are two ways: You can have a rough queue, with posts so many times a day, and shuffle it around. You can also schedule a post for a given time, down to the minute, and have it not even published until then. You can have a big sloppy queue that works around scheduled posts! This is great!
Three: Timestamps on the dashboard. If you hover over the upper right corner of an item on your dashboard, you can see the time it was posted, according to your clock, not the poster's. This is nice to have.
Four: Being able to turn off endless scrolling on your dashboard, and go to pages by number. Because endless scrolling is naff, really.
Five: Being able to change your name (and thus URL) for free. That's--OK, that can be confusing for your followers, but it's nice to have the freedom. Maybe you misspelled it the first time, or it was too much about that time off your life. I've cluttered up other sites with usernames I decided I didn't quite want.
Six: Understanding that followers and those-you-follow are two different sets. And not calling them "friends."
Seven: What Tumblr is, as I see it: A way to put lots of images up, in a customizable "webpage" format (relatively) smoothly accessible to others as well as yourself; without lots of creepy ads nor the look of the old image hosts; that's pretty user-friendly--and no expectations about where the images came from, nor removal for copyright infringement, nor removal for nudity and sex. Tumblr is a very flexible image host wrapped in an online community.
Eight: Being able to not only put up pictures, but video and audio, without having to host it elsewhere, on a journal-type site.
Nine: The name. Yes, the name "Tumblr." It makes sense because it's not trying to be descriptive. It's a name born of connotation. It's evocative of drinking, and of gymnastics, and of images tumbling out of a box. It doesn't try to tell you exactly what it is; it can be a journal, a public relations site, or an online party.
Ten: Not only having customizable themes, but treating it as a way for web designers to make money. This was Tumblr's main source of income in the beginning, actually, since it's free to use, and didn't really do ads at first. (And yes, Tumblr's business model was a thing that didn't make a lot of sense for a long time. I keep worrying it'll just bleed red ink until it disappears.)
Honorable mention: Allowing Javascript in the theme. OK, it's mainly for the page description. Too bad you can't put it in posts so well; the dashboard won't show it. So that's a mixed bag.
Wow. That's harder to pin down for me. Do I want to just mention innovations of Tumblr, or also things it did right like other sites did right? A bit of both, I guess. Let's just dive in:
One: Drafts. I love being able to start a post, save a draft, and come back to it later, then post it however I want. This is probably rooted in Tumblr not being a dated diary format, unlike LiveJournal, Dreamwidth, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. Tumblr builds webpages that don't need to be timestamped. They're very mediated webpages, but they are webpages.
Two: The queue. Instead of posting everything when you see it, you can stick it in queue and let it post sometime in the future! There are two ways: You can have a rough queue, with posts so many times a day, and shuffle it around. You can also schedule a post for a given time, down to the minute, and have it not even published until then. You can have a big sloppy queue that works around scheduled posts! This is great!
Three: Timestamps on the dashboard. If you hover over the upper right corner of an item on your dashboard, you can see the time it was posted, according to your clock, not the poster's. This is nice to have.
Four: Being able to turn off endless scrolling on your dashboard, and go to pages by number. Because endless scrolling is naff, really.
Five: Being able to change your name (and thus URL) for free. That's--OK, that can be confusing for your followers, but it's nice to have the freedom. Maybe you misspelled it the first time, or it was too much about that time off your life. I've cluttered up other sites with usernames I decided I didn't quite want.
Six: Understanding that followers and those-you-follow are two different sets. And not calling them "friends."
Seven: What Tumblr is, as I see it: A way to put lots of images up, in a customizable "webpage" format (relatively) smoothly accessible to others as well as yourself; without lots of creepy ads nor the look of the old image hosts; that's pretty user-friendly--and no expectations about where the images came from, nor removal for copyright infringement, nor removal for nudity and sex. Tumblr is a very flexible image host wrapped in an online community.
Eight: Being able to not only put up pictures, but video and audio, without having to host it elsewhere, on a journal-type site.
Nine: The name. Yes, the name "Tumblr." It makes sense because it's not trying to be descriptive. It's a name born of connotation. It's evocative of drinking, and of gymnastics, and of images tumbling out of a box. It doesn't try to tell you exactly what it is; it can be a journal, a public relations site, or an online party.
Ten: Not only having customizable themes, but treating it as a way for web designers to make money. This was Tumblr's main source of income in the beginning, actually, since it's free to use, and didn't really do ads at first. (And yes, Tumblr's business model was a thing that didn't make a lot of sense for a long time. I keep worrying it'll just bleed red ink until it disappears.)
Honorable mention: Allowing Javascript in the theme. OK, it's mainly for the page description. Too bad you can't put it in posts so well; the dashboard won't show it. So that's a mixed bag.