Nah you’re on the mark, it was more like the older Internet where you were just a username and didn’t have your entire identity attached to your account. And yeah, for better or worse Tumblr was known to have a very insular community with weird interests and trends. That’s how we got Goncharov.
Two other things about Tumblr that no other site has managed to capture are longer format posts and being able to reblog multi-user conversations. Everything else prevents you from making longer posts outside of screenshotting a notes app.
Word from insiders communicating openly about it was that it wasn’t going to happen for the same reasons behind this soft end of life: there wasn’t profit in it and they needed to find profitability.
Word was that the project to federate was internally put in a “too hard let’s try later” basket. Of course none of that was made public. But this life support status is really just the other shoe from the broken federation promise.
Interestingly, I suspect there’s a conversation to be had around how difficult it is to federate with the fediverse and AP, whether from the ground up or as an add on. I’ve seen conversations about how it really is difficult work. If it were easier, maybe things like tumblr would have done it earlier and the fediverse and it’s various platforms would be richer and more successful.
That’s not good, especially as they wanted to join the Fediverse in the future.
I mean there’s Pixelfed which is similar, the communities could just migrate to that.
I feel like it’s a different format and use case?
Pixelfed feels more like Instagram, which is with real profiles with names attached sharing photo updates about their lives with friends and family
Tumblr feels like it’s more for niche communities and semi-anonymous posting. Although I personally haven’t used it as much so I might be off there
Nah you’re on the mark, it was more like the older Internet where you were just a username and didn’t have your entire identity attached to your account. And yeah, for better or worse Tumblr was known to have a very insular community with weird interests and trends. That’s how we got Goncharov.
Two other things about Tumblr that no other site has managed to capture are longer format posts and being able to reblog multi-user conversations. Everything else prevents you from making longer posts outside of screenshotting a notes app.
Didn’t know this existed. Good to know.
Word from insiders communicating openly about it was that it wasn’t going to happen for the same reasons behind this soft end of life: there wasn’t profit in it and they needed to find profitability.
Word was that the project to federate was internally put in a “too hard let’s try later” basket. Of course none of that was made public. But this life support status is really just the other shoe from the broken federation promise.
Interestingly, I suspect there’s a conversation to be had around how difficult it is to federate with the fediverse and AP, whether from the ground up or as an add on. I’ve seen conversations about how it really is difficult work. If it were easier, maybe things like tumblr would have done it earlier and the fediverse and it’s various platforms would be richer and more successful.