Tumblr .. .

[wygolvillage]

Oof, I see the tumblr news hit here as well. I imagine they're gonna try to sell the site again or keep it on the back burner until its not worth keeping online.

[ashton]

And I still customize mine even though most people don't open full desktop versions anymore. (For shame, really, but that's what mobile convenience does I guess).

man, do i miss the days where you would post abt how you changed your blog's theme and all your followers would go and check it out to tell you how nice it was now or whatever

i don't think tumblr will really die until, like tarraxahum says, the servers shut down. most of it's appeal now is in how much "smaller" it is compared to twitter and tiktok: the active userbase is older and prefers the "intimate" feeling as opposed to how fast-paced the more popular socmed feels. i am really interested to see how this new "skeleton crew" affects the way site interface/features are updated, though. most (if not all) of the recent changes are widely disliked (please make it so i can click on the timestamp of a post and go to the specific reblog of that post again, i am begging) so... uncharitably, i can't imagine they'll be much worse

to my understanding, an unspoken part of social media sites/apps is just that they're never really that profitable. (i think the one exception is tiktok, but take that w a grain of salt, i haven't checked up on it recently) tumblr was never going to be the money printing machine that verizon thought it was going to be; even at it's peak it wasnt making money  and that'll probably never change

[bugholder's epiphany]

Heard it's getting worse on there, actually. Apparently the only staff left is a skeleton crew, which means tumblr may very well die one day soon.

[shevek]

Heard it's getting worse on there, actually. Apparently the only staff left is a skeleton crew, which means tumblr may very well die one day soon.

Yes, this is kind of why I revived the thread

[bugholder's epiphany]

Yes, this is kind of why I revived the thread

oh whoops! I only saw the last post on the first page, haha
Seriously though, that's a shame. I never cared much for Tumblr but seeing it potentially enter it's death throes is surreal.

[nintendowii99]

I'm definitely a bit sad about the news, as historically these type of "re-assigning employees" and "skeleton crew" shifts have never spelt good news. While it is true that recent updates have been disliked, i'm concerned because there are still lots of bugs that could be fixed to improve user experience on the site. Tumblr is one of the glitchiest sites I use, to be honest, and this news doesn't inspire hope that those glitches will be fixed anytime soon.

Sad to see with the recent news of Omegle shutting down as well. I hope that tumblr stays alive, even though I don't use it very often anymore. It was the first ever "social media" that I joined and i've been on the site for 15+ years now.

[freaksaint]

As far as I can tell, they're leaving a skeleton crew to manage Tumblr, which mostly means a lack of updates (or just slowing down with them). Which, considering that like 80% of recent updates were decidedly unpopular and even widely hated (who thought that making the layout into a clone of Twitter is a good idea, mother of--), might not even be the worst thing. Teams managing support and reports seem to be Automatic-wide and never assigned specifically to Tumblr alone, so those aspects shouldn't change much.

As for the general "Gah, Tumblr is dying" thing, eh, Tumblr is dying at least once a year, and people overreact every time. That website is a cockroach and its main userbase likely won't leave until a full server shutdown. As someone who's been there for 10 years (and I don't even consider myself especially old in Tumblr years), I say I'll believe it when I see it.

you hit the nail on the head here! i've had my tumblr account going on 12 years now and i swear there's something baked into the formula of that site that makes it unkillable. not to mention it is still the nuclear center of meme production like it's always been - i STILL see tumblr screenshots everywhere. another thing i don't think people are aware of via tumblr (i will say this as nondescriptly as possible lol) is that even though tumblr supposedly 'killed' the NSFW/SW community on its site, it's uh...it's still there. it is VERY much there. users have just gotten way better at manipulating tags/images/post replies/etc to make sure their content is still seen by others. don't ask how i know this, i have sources lol. but believe me when i say the NSFW community is VERY much alive on tumblr, just hidden under clever tags and blurred icons.

all of that to say, there's a lot more going on behind the curtain re:active users. for a supposedly 'dead' site it's more active than any actually dead site (think furcadia) that has the user experience of walking around a post-apocalyptic graveyard. my dash is active and pretty much everyone i follow has been there for the last decade, same as me. and for every funnyposter™ that logs off and joins the 'real world', there is always another funnyman ready and willing to take their place...it's like its own delicate self-sustaining ecosystem yknow.

[Grimlock]

i definitely think its going to be a while before they pull the plug on it. desperation led to them making the site more of a mess than it was before so a skeleton crew doing less updates will probably be a welcome change for most longtime users.

Still even if they only do bugfixes the site is still probably pretty usable considering how easy it is to curate your dashboard plus desktop and android users get to ignore some of the more annoying changes with xkit + dashboard unfucker and tumblr revanced

[WynnDawnstrider]

I don't know why everyone is being so doom and gloom about it
The moderation team doesn't appear to be going anywhere and it sounds like there will be a shift to focusing more on core features rather than all the weird stuff we all hate.
Also it's very likely that when the contract is up for live, it'll get removed.
There's a whole article on it that ISNT a leaked out of context memo and pretty much everything going on is a good thing.

[BlazingCobaltX]

Tumblr has died several alleged deaths in the past few years, so I'm not exactly panicking at the latest news. If anything, a skeleton crew only doing basic maintenance is something Tumblr needed for years. Who thinks it a good idea to keep implementing new features when you can't even fix problems users have been complaining about for years?

[SquidDied]

as far as iv seen theyre gonna cool it on the stupid new features ppl hate and focus on its actual core features, i also read that tumblr live is probably gonna die after the years out

i really hope the platform stays alive bc its one of the last good places on the internet imo, even with all its issues

[shevek]

I think it's super interesting to see how Tumblr is being described; kind of like a personification. Something of a culture and power of its own that makes CEO's powerless to stop it, something that can't be killed, a cockroach. I wonder where that comes from? It's fun to see I don't think I see any other website described like that.

We'll see if it will all remain true and Tumblr is here for years or decades to come. The cockroach cannot help but live in the same environment we all do.. recession, inflation, lots of people being let go, VC money running out & investors generally scared to commit, other projects being shut down, the all around realization that while all kinds of websites ran on that investor money, they didn't do anything all these years that would make the sites profitable by themselves.

So now, enshittification everywhere at once - locking things behind paywalls, cracking down on password sharing and ad-blockers, more ads between posts, more changes that while many people say they personally dislike, they cause more engagement in tests and therefore get implemented anyway. Stuff like outrage news and things encouraging doomscrolling, posts of random people in your timeline, every website hoping they can get an algorithm as precise and addictive as TikTok's for their own For You page, reels and shorts and lives.. yes, you don't like it, but do you stop using the service over it? No. You get used to it, maybe block it if you can, and also reblog or retweet a bunch of things about it, driving engagement and making the site feel as lively as ever. So they can have their (hopefully) new money-makers, and keep you too, just how the company wanted.

Most features follow the formula of keeping you engaged for as long as possible, to provide incentives to come back regularly and not just stay there once or twice, and to see the most ads you can, while also sharing a lot of data and permissions to sell that data. And all of that drastically to get enough money, or annoy you enough to get into their ad-free plans (depending on the service) or other premium tiers that offer previously basic functionalities and more comfort. In case of Tumblr, more engagement also means being more in tune with the site culture, which through the view of the company means a higher likelihood of you participating in blazing posts, sending someone some username badges or some crabs for fun, and whatever new thing that's going on.

I get why it's being seen as positive that Tumblr will now cease with the new features no one wanted, but in this current climate, it could be worse than at any other time before. It means they're ceasing the testing, it means ceasing anything that could provide money because it will cost upfront money to develop that and devs to pay, and cease things that could drive up numbers temporarily for a possible sale so someone will be interested. In my view, as long as some shitty features are still being developed, that means there's still hope, but if they stop altogether in this climate, it's not a good sign.

The reason Tumblr survived this long wasn't getting a life of its own that CEOs stopped being able to control and being really special, it was a number of different people repeatedly going "What the previous people did was stupid, I can turn the ship around!" and it being acquired by bigger companies with other means of incoming money. You could almost call Tumblr a something akin to a loss-leader with how much it was upkept with money other projects generated, except it doesn't even pull you into what else Yahoo (back then) or now Automattic have to offer. With everything going on, there may be the end of the line of people who are willing to take this on.

I sometimes thought that Tumblr suffers a bit from "cow on the milk packaging" marketing, where we envision the people leading it to be really passionate about it, grown up on Tumblr themselves, and doing everything for the users, sacrificing a lot to keep it alive for the good of the world because "it needs a space like that". But it hasn't been in the possession of the original dev for so long now; there is likely no emotional attachment to that site with the owners now. It's something they acquired as a company to make big and it failed. They won't be sad to turn it off, which is done as easily as pulling the plug on some servers, except maybe being sad for the money that was wasted.

[creaturefeature]

Idk if this is somehow related. But i feel the reason why people still keep coming back to tumblr is the lack of a better place to go?  Saying this as somehow who has tried every other socmed under the sun. Believe me I tried, a lot of the alternative are A) too algorithmic focused or B) lack a huge fandom community presence.  And yes I recall months ago on this thread that tumblr can sometimes suck for artists, but also you get more engagement on here.

Trust me instagram sucks even more as a place for creativity, you know gonna make videos just to get more views.

And its very hard to get your own friends to go to different places, so I think tumblr wont die until someone actually pulls the plug. Or they manage to find something that surpasses tumlbr.

That being said even thought i dont think its gonna be gone anytime soon, its doesnt hurt to backup your blog, as well share contacts links in case there´s another migration

[Bede]

I agree with @creaturefeature - back up your blogs! I HIGHLY recommend this method. Unlike the official method of exporting your blog, this method doesn't take long once it's all set up (tumblr's official method is VERYYYY slow) and also saves image descriptions!

If you're not already versed in python, it takes a while to set up for the first time, but thankfully this doc is VERY thorough in explaining what exactly to do, so even a python-illiterate doofus like myself could manage it.

[Swiftpaw]

Honestly I think Tumblr would be fine if they reverted the generally disliked changes such as Tumblr live and changing the layout to look like Twitter, and keep the ads as well as the ability to Blaze posts for revenue. Most people who use Tumblr like it because it's not like other social media sites, and don't really want it to change that much, so a skeleton crew might not be a bad thing for it. Plus you have many who have been rejoining Tumblr because of nostalgia.