Staff - Tumblr Posts - Page 2
Your replies are on the way, Tumblr
Just wanted to let you know that we’re putting the finishing touches on replies, and making sure they play nicely with everything else on this platform.
“Why did they go away? Why, staff, whyyyy?” Fair question. We had a gaggle of overlapping message-like systems—namely, asks, fan mail, reblogging with commentary, question posts (rare!), and, yes, replies. When we finally introduced actual instant messaging a couple months ago, we had a lot of untangling to do.
In order to make all these systems work together, we had to do some back-end retooling, which meant taking down replies for a bit. For longer than we expected. Sorry about that.
And we get it—replies fill a very particular need (and you were very clear about expressing that need). They’re a kind of super like. A way to fully express your feelings about a thing without expecting anything in response. A gift.
When they come back, they’ll be even better. People will be able to reply to your posts multiple times, and you’ll even be able to reply to your own posts. Simple changes, yes, but ones that open up lots of possibilities.
Best of all, we’ve laid the down the engineering and design groundwork for even more substantial improvements down the road. Replies will be able to develop side-by-side with messaging.
More to come, soon enough. We know you all miss replies. We hope you enjoy their imminent return.
Another reason to turn on replies: Starting today, you can delete any unwanted ones from your post notes. Just tap the note you don’t want to see, select the relevant option, and away it’ll go. (If it’s not on your own original post, tapping the note lets you report it to our support team.)
You can also hide inappropriate reblog comments using the same technique.
Just a little tweak to give you more control over your notescape. Enjoy.
Anyone else still feel like the ‘Best Stuff First’ thing is enabled, even though they’ve long since disabled it? My dash hasn’t been the same...
Introducing: Reblog Controls
This is not a drill, repeat, this is not a drill—we are rolling out reblog controls across web and iOS, starting today.
How does it work?
When drafting a post, select the settings cog in the top right corner of your post editor. From here, you can choose one of two options.
“Anyone (on Tumblr)” means just that.
“No one” means that your post cannot be reblogged by anyone, ever.
Why?
Your wish is our command. Many of you have told us this feature would give you a welcome sense of safety. If you block someone after the post was made, don’t worry—they still can’t reblog it. This change gives you control over your own posts, and so will improve your posting experience. Ultimately, better posting means a better Tumblr. And finally, don’t worry, Android users. The feature will follow on your platform soon.
That’s all, folks. Happy reblogging!
Any questions? Drop us a line on @wip or Support, and keep an eye out for the mobile rollout on @changes.
Sharing is gifting Ad-Free Browsing—on mobile!
The wait is over. From today, you can gift Ad-Free Browsing to other users on mobile. If you love giving presents and know someone who doesn’t love ads on Tumblr and they have an Android or iPhone, this will be great news. You can gift an ad-free month to a special someone at $4.99 or a whole ad-free year at $39.99 (that’s 4 months for $0!). You can include a little note with your present, or even send it anonymously. So why not show them you love them—and tell them, if you like—with the gift of Ad-Free Browsing on Tumblr?
How?
It could not be easier. Simply tap on the gift icon on the recipient’s blog header, and you’re away! The recipient’s dash will be ad-free across all platforms once it is received.
You can find out more about this in our handy Help Center article. Any questions? Then please drop us a line on @wip or Support, and keep an eye out for more updates on @changes.
Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy
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.
Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.
Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up.
We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.
Actions & Next Steps
Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.
Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.
Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.
We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.
The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.
Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant.
Actions & Next Steps
Deliver great content each time the app is opened.
Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are.
Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds.
Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.
Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.
Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.
Actions & Next Steps
Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.
Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs.
Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.
Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread.
Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads.
Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed.
Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.
Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.
Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.
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.
It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.
Actions & Next Steps
Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it.
Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.
Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.
Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.
Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.
Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.
Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.
Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.
Actions & Next Steps
Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.
Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.
Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages.
Test what the right daily push notification limit is.
Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.
Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.
The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.
Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.
Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users.
Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.
Conclusion
Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.
Finished this lovely Sun Elf commission! It’s for the DM: Matthew, whom commissioned it as a birthday present for one of his adventurers :)
This is the sorcerer Thamior, born into Sun Elf nobility & his familiar: the 900 year old raven Elea'mor (Ellie for short), whom had to keep him out of trouble more than once, but loves him dearly anyway. Thamior was mentored by the 600 year old Moon Elf sorcerer Thamor, who taught him the tricks of the trade.
Tumblr you know what would be a really good "valentines present"...
I’m pretty sure Donnie and I would be best friends on the fact of sticks alone, for I too cannot be trusted with a large stick 😆🙌🏼💜
I saw this thread and it resonated with me and this picture that I just had to combine them.
Like fellow purple genius would *dramatic hair flip*
So enjoy my fellow humans! Laugh with me Bwahahahahahaha *relishing evil chuckle*