The Trouble with Tumblr
I tried to take part in a social “meme” on Tumblr today. At 11am I posted a video exported from iMovie (I won't bore you with details – lets just say it was very compatible with everything and anywhere), uploaded it to Tumblr, and expected it to appear. It didn't. Instead the interface showed a new “Processing” title in the sidebar. For eight hours until I clicked the trashcan icon on the “processing” video.
Here's the thing. 18 months ago I built PluggedOut (originally called “We The Users”) – a social blogging platform prototype that fixed a lot of the issues with Tumblr. Working alone, it took me a week of evenings to build, and did all sorts of things that people have been asking for from Tumblr for years; proper private messaging, commenting on posts, friends-only posts, and lots of other small things. I built the entire thing in perhaps three weeks of evenings – working on my own, at almost zero cost.
How can Tumblr possibly defend themselves when they have eaten through 125 million dollars of venture funding so far, are now owned by Yahoo (who are still huge), and have entire teamsof engineers supposedly working on the platform...
There have always been good reasons why my written posts have not lived on Tumblr. There was always a nagging doubt in the infrastructure, the design of the platform, and the seeming indifference to their users wishes. Even Apple have begun listening to their customers with the iPhone 6 – I'm wondering what it will take for Tumblr to do the same.
The only huge asset Tumblr has going for it is the community of users. In many ways, the users remind me of the Apple Mac user-base from the late 80s and early 90s – who carried on with their beloved machines despite them being obsolete, overpriced junk. If Tumblr continue to shit on, or ignore their users in the same way they have over the last couple of years, all it will take is a half-decent competitor to appear, and a landslide will happen. Android did it to iOS. Windows did it to Mac OS. It will happen.
Tumblr can stop it now, if only they start listening, and acting.