Thoughts about leaving Tumblr
Over the past few weeks I've been giving this whole blogging escapade a fair amount of thought. More thought than I've given it in quite some time – which doesn't actually have to be that much thought at all, given that I haven't really given it any thought at all for the last little while.
I'm not sure how to write this, without it sounding like I'm trying to make some kind of grand pronouncement, so I'll just come out and say it.
I'm leaving Tumblr.
I suppose the title of the blog post gave it away really, but I couldn't think of anything clever or witty to title the post with, so went with the obvious.
For the past several months I've been telling myself “you'll be walking away from so many people”, and that thought has stopped me from leaving – but then eventually you realise your relationship with just about every one of the people you tell yourself you will miss is tremendously one-sided anyway.
I guess the truth is, Tumblr is slowly dying. People are leaving. Three or four years ago there were a central core of three or four hundred users there, sharing original content – the same kind of content you might expect to find on Wordpress or LiveJournal : original written posts about daily life. They seem to have all but vanished now – chased away either by the sale of Tumblr to Yahoo, or the subsequent sale of Yahoo to Verizon. I'm not quite sure of the reasoning behind many of the people that left, but their absence has kind of ripped the heart from the platform.
There's another side to all of this though. I've been sharing posts in two places (here and Tumblr), and that's just a dumb idea to start with. Quite why I was cross-posting is anybody's guess – although not as bad as the situation I found myself in for a few months, several years ago – when I experimented with posting the same contenteverywhere– Blogger, Wordpress, Tumblr, LiveJournal, and so on. If you're wondering, it had no effect on traffic what-so-ever, so don't believe the crap that blogging “gurus” spout.
I now find myself with a decision to make. Do I announce my departure from Tumblr, or do I just quietly fall into the shadows? Maybe I should let them know – regardless of how little notice anybody might take.
Cutting down the number of places I frequent on the internet will almost certainly lead to more posts here – which I'm thinking can only be a good thing, right ? One place to write the words, one place to read them, one place to like the words,and in the darkness bind them (sorry – couldn't resist).
Postscript – I removed all my posts from Tumblr this morning, save one – informing people where they could now find me.