7 ms·

Why Tumblr Sucks

121 points by PStamatiou 16y ago

benologist 16y ago
Wow .....
jw84 16y ago
I've used Tumblr for 3 years, mostly during my funemployment year. Content on Tumblr at the time were just pulled from Ffffound, YayHooray, Flickr, Vimeo, 4chan, 4chan-lite (Reddit). Then you have the unique content from the small group of also funemployed or under-employed mid-20s writers, artists, and filmmakers. That creative group made Tumblr a really fun place. Then Tumblr got big and went mainstream and went on the growth pattern curve of big internet message boards. Uh oh, eternal September. Many have grown up and grown out of Tumblr, others are working full time again so the content shift is beginning. Once clean 400px wide multimedia page layouts are peppered with glittery trinkets, customer mouse pointers, and encumbering music players. Tweens have settled in with duckfaces and shameless personal drama. The Corporations have also stepped in, trying to slick up their wardrobe, wanting to blend in with the cool crowd. It's not a complete wasteland but Tumblr has traded wrestling one monster for another. Though still an enviable position, who doesn't want to be the guy trying to come up with strategies of how to deal with a billion pageviews? Then again, who does? But running the business like the adults its original and most passionate users have become would be a start.
- iamdave 16y ago
  4chan-lite == reddit??
pclark 16y ago
Love tumblr, love the community, love the design, but god it feels like it's tied together with string. About two years ago I made the simple request of allowing me to not auto tweet content when posted with bookmarklet (it. would. just. be. a. checkbox.) but it never happened, i think they replied and said they didn't plan it. there's no importer for wordpress or any other content. the way you repost stuff is atrocious. i love the concept, but it has no concept of who originally posted it when you quote something, leading to the worlds most horrendous spaghetti of html for you to deal with (eg: http://grab.by/6iqJ http://grab.by/6iqJ) Tumblr has got all the hard stuff right, and is seemingly failing at the easy technical stuff :(
- kmfrk 16y ago
  This is the part of the last 5% of polish that can be so important to intermediate super users, because they need everything to be in order before they settle and keep using the platform. When you reach a point when you don't feel that they are perfecting the problem - and have the passion - and just tweaking the back-end, you start to lose hope and consider the alternatives. It doesn't feel like someone who still want to fix a problem and create something that they themselves would love. This applies to many of my experiences, some of which were Disqus and Forrst.
- jmahoney 16y ago
  The whole reposting while keeping attribution has been tidied up a lot this week: http://staff.tumblr.com/post/1059624418/content-attribution http://staff.tumblr.com/post/1059624418/content-attribution
  - zach-inglis 16y ago
    I agree that this is good news.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
- biturd 16y ago
  I seem to be able to toggle on and off the twitter settings. I use markdown mode, and when I reblog something, I just delete all the copy in the text area, an attribute line is still given to the original source. Or I can par it down and quote one of the other rebloggers, but usually feel it is best to site the source, which happens automatically.
- code_duck 16y ago
  Sounds a lot like Etsy. It takes them years to implement simple feature requests (which are repeated by thousands of customers). Then, when they do, if ever, the implementation and design are botched.
joey_bananas 16y ago
The no. 1 reason tumbler sucks: 1 original content site for every 1000 reposting shitheaps. Also, people using it for posting info that would be much better presented in some other way. I'm looking at you safariextensions.tumblr.com, your site is pretty much worthless thanks to the decision to use tumblr.
- kmfrk 16y ago
  That's a community problem; if you subscribe to a Tumblr blog (tumblelog, microblog, etc.) like you would with any other blog, this wouldn't be a problem. It's a Tumblr problem for Tumblr users. Many people - not necessarily you - tend to forget that Tumblr is (also) a blogging platform when used outside of the - atrocious - Dashboard. You wouldn't say the same about Blogger or Wordpress, for instance; at least it doesn't look like crap in Tumblr. Tumblr has definitely created a trend and affected the blogscape with its laudable ease with which you can publish content online, and it certainly has its pros and cons. Most of the cons only exist if you focus on them.
mikecane 16y ago
If you post from a Windows PC, your data is trapped until they deign to create an export app (WTF!) to pull out the data. Ridiculous! I can pull my stuff out of WordPress by doing Export XML. That they require an app is just plain screwy.
- kmfrk 16y ago
  If they design one such. With Marco's anti-Microsoft proclivities, such a thing might never see the light of day.
  - mikecane 16y ago
    Then they should offer to do the damned export on their end with their Macs. I don't care if I have to wait a week or a month. I'm not using Tumblr anymore. Just give me my damned XML.
- jmahoney 16y ago
  Your data is hardly trapped. You can export any or all of your posts as xml using the Tumblr api (http://tumblr.com/api http://tumblr.com/api) and your browser. eg http://we-heart-sci-fi.tumblr.com/api/read http://we-heart-sci-fi.tumblr.com/api/read There are any number of scripts/gists/pasties around the web that will give a simple script to download your posts.
  - mikecane 16y ago
    >>>There are any number of scripts/gists/pasties around the web that will give a simple script to download your posts. So, Tumblr is a site where you can press a button to put stuff in but you have to deal with the stuff you just listed to get it back out. You've made half my own point there.
holman 16y ago
> 70% uptime. I really hate to be "that" dude, but... [CITATION NEEDED]
- jw84 16y ago
  No actual numbers but it's been up and down quite often. What's more important is that the users FEEL the downtime is annoying.
  - kmfrk 16y ago
    When isn't downtime annoying? I'll manage and live a happy life as soon as they replace the weird 404. I wouldn't be surprised that the general uptime isn't great, but it's not that often that Tumblr is available an entire day.
    - jw84 16y ago
      When you can still live with it enough not to point it out. But the point has been brought.
    - kmfrk 16y ago
      "Is unavailable an entire day."* The irony isn't lost on me.
- nphase 16y ago
  Let me fix that for you: [1]: http://zachinglis.com/2010/why-tumblr-sucks/ http://zachinglis.com/2010/why-tumblr-sucks/ "What feels like 70% uptime"
- smackfu 16y ago
  If you are down all day every Monday, that's still 85% uptime. Hyperbole is awesome!
kmfrk 16y ago
On another note, the Terry Richardson accusations hardly seem to have been proven nor resulted in any prosecution that I know of. Bashing Tumblr for what they've obviously done is O.K., but TR shouldn't be slandered on account of dubious claims.
- erikpukinskis 16y ago
  That's absurd. The OP claims that TR was accused of coercing models into sleeping with him. TR was without question accused... the accusations are published everywhere. As for the merit of the accusations... There is a litany of models who say that they felt coerced by him. If they felt coerced, then they were coerced. End of story. Maybe you feel they shouldn't have let themselves be coerced, but that doesn't change the fact that they were.
- ilovecomputers 16y ago
  Also, it is irrelevant.
acabal 16y ago
A little off topic, but was anyone else bothered by the fact that his picture is overlapping the navigation buttons on Ubuntu Firefox so that I can't click 'Home', 'TL;DR', or 'Archives'? This plus the fact that I'm looking at a web developer's website made me think twice about what he had to say without even having read it. Edit: having read this, the guy sounds like a hack. While I don't use Tumblr myself, the author makes a lot of baseless assumptions about Tumblr's systems as if they were fact. For all he (or we) know, there might be good technical reasons why things aren't aligned with his own blogging nirvana. Having been on the author's side of the table (the customer who is also a developer) along with Tumblr's side (the big company with a probably complex back-end), I want to say that when the author makes totally unverified assumptions about how a site's SELECT queries work, pulls percentages out of thin air, and smacks the table and shouting "BUT THIS FEATURE SHOULD BE SO EASY TO IMPLEMENT, ARG, LOOK HOW THEY 'HACKED' IT TOGETHER," it just highlight the author's ignorance. Edit 2: Wow, bashing them for having their picture taken with a celebrity you don't like? Saying they're a bad service and calling them slackers because they don't have a revenue model yet? Really?! How did this even get on HN?
- zach-inglis 16y ago
  If you think less of me because my website has only been out for 3 days and has issues, then you are being hypocritical. I know what I am talking about too. I have worked on small sites upto ones with hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank. I realise they have scaling issues but let's be fair: Twitter had less of a problem. So you are saying it's well put together? I have made plenty of examples on how it fails and on its serious lack of stability. I have heard many a person say they has issues. If they had behaved with grace at all throughout my dealings with them, maybe I would be more sympathetic. Remember, politeness is free and there is no scalability issues with that one. Its not about which celebrity, it's about there're being serious cries from me and many other tumblrs about the issues and all they do is roll out new features and faff about. As much as you want to call me a hack you have to admit one of the worst things to do to a codebase that has issues is add yet more features before you stabalize what you have.
  - acabal 16y ago
Sephr 16y ago
Not to mention that the dashboard takes literally minutes to load (though it only seems to affect some users, including). They have never fixed it after multiple people have reported this.
- c1sc0 16y ago
  That's actually the only thing that bothers me about tumblr, but not enough to switch
thehodge 16y ago
Having created a tumblr account for a mini blog of quotes from our office (http://hodgeoffice.tumblr.com http://hodgeoffice.tumblr.com) it frustrates me that I have to change the URL to tumblr.com to post anything on it, theres no dashboard button on the subdomain even when Tumblr knows I'm logged in... unless I'm missing something
- cmelbye 16y ago
  It's in the top right corner: http://cl.ly/2Ivj http://cl.ly/2Ivj
  - thehodge 16y ago
    I'm an idiot, thanks :)
suhail 16y ago
A bit over the top. Looking from Tumblr's perspective, yes over 4 years any company is bound to make technical mistakes. Should you sum them up in a blog post and say they suck? Probably not. I am sure the documented mistakes over the years have been resolved and fixed. It's understandable that this person is frustrated--Tumblr probably should do a better job serving it's power users who remain loyal and helped create the community it has.
shortformblog 16y ago
This feels contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. Not that there aren't good points here, but it just seems like somebody had to knock them down a peg. And you know, for all of the weaknesses with code pointed out in this post, the reason that the site has taken off is really its design and functionality. Fact of matter, no other hosted blogging platform offers its mix of simplicity, customizability (you can do a CRAPLOAD of stuff with this platform that you can't do with the free version of Wordpress.com, including ads) and user interaction. My guess: They'll solve the downtime issues. They'll solve the more technical issues. They'll even solve the customer service problems. The design backbone of the product is why. Twitter had the right design mentality and that's why the technical problems have slowly gone away. Weaknesses in design are harder to solve than technical problems. Unless you're Digg. Then you're screwed.
- zachinglis 16y ago
  I really hope so.
- ohashi 16y ago
  A culture of bad service and not paying attention to code details will be corrected later? My gut tells me that just isn't going to happen. Twitter had issues but I never got the feeling they weren't trying or listening.
  - zachinglis 16y ago
    You got my point exactly! :)
karl11 16y ago
Just last week I couldn't login - I would get a "You don't have permissions to access this page" error. I e-mailed support and a few days later they responded saying the my account had "corrupted" and that they deleted it, and that I would be able to make a new account with the same name. Awesome service. Definitely going with Posterous.
- zachinglis 16y ago
  I would love to add that to my blog post if you have a screenshot?
  - karl11 16y ago
    Sent to the email posted on your site! And I should add now that I've looked back at the email that they did respond within 24hrs, but the response was as I described.
terra_t 16y ago
isn't it just some kind of black hat spam site that's written by Markov chains?
jakerocheleau 16y ago
It seems like the article is mostly bashing Tumblr as a professional blogging platform, which I agree it's not. Tumblr is supposed to be a micro-blogging platform for networking and sharing small bits of posts, photos, music, videos, etc... Either way haters gonna hate
- zach-inglis 16y ago
  I did not start out hating it. The community has been an integral part of my life the last few years, such as meeting my best friend I now live with.
ivankirigin 16y ago
I've had almost no problems
beza1e1 16y ago
I'm still using it http://compilers.tumblr.com/ http://compilers.tumblr.com/ because it has the best bookmarklet i have used so far. I even use the bookmarklet to enter free text posts without a link to the current page.
- gbrindisi 16y ago
  Have you tried the Posterous bookmarklet? I think it's way better and super easy to use. I had a couple issues with Tumblr bookmarklet, like not opening at all (even crashing my Chrome tab) or not formatting properly my post.
  - beza1e1 16y ago
    Just tried it. I like it that the tumblr bookmarklet opens in its own window. However, Posterous improves by finding an abstract automatically.
rakkhi 16y ago
I use blogger because I'm a bit of a google fanboy. It is a bit old fashioned but solid as a rock. Simple to add in whatever I want via html/java gadget. Still though I was thinking of moving my blog (http://www.rakkhis.com http://www.rakkhis.com) to Tumblr or Posterous. Has anyone done this? How hard is it? I have moved my comments to Disqus to make this process easier. Now just my articles... Still this post makes me think maybe Tumblr is not the way to go?
- ebun 16y ago
  I moved from Blogger to Posterous some time back. The migration is pretty simple but there was one problem: my private/unpublished posts from Blogger became private in Posterous. I had to go through and manually set them back to private. This was before Posterous started aggressively pushing for moves from other platforms to themselves though, so that issue may have been fixed.
zachinglis 16y ago
I also forgot this… http://altreport.hipsterrunoff.com/2010/02/pitchfork-steals-url-to-start-a-tumblr-tumblr-facing-big-brother-backlash.html http://altreport.hipsterrunoff.com/2010/02/pitchfork-steals-...
icodeforlove 16y ago
I have been experiencing horrible API downtime’s for the past 3 days. When a developer is working with a brittle API that can be up one minute, and down for hours it becomes extremely frustrating. So yesterday I had to ask myself a few questions: 1) Do I still like tumblr? 2) Are they worth it? The answers for me were Yes, and Yes… So I created a page/service to make tracking down the uptime/downtime issues a bit easier, if you’re interested in my API then hit me up @icodeforlove Here is the page: http://tumblruptime.icodeforlove.com/ http://tumblruptime.icodeforlove.com/

121 points by PStamatiou 16y ago

Wow .....

jw84 16y ago

I've used Tumblr for 3 years, mostly during my funemployment year. Content on Tumblr at the time were just pulled from Ffffound, YayHooray, Flickr, Vimeo, 4chan, 4chan-lite (Reddit). Then you have the unique content from the small group of also funemployed or under-employed mid-20s writers, artists, and filmmakers. That creative group made Tumblr a really fun place. Then Tumblr got big and went mainstream and went on the growth pattern curve of big internet message boards. Uh oh, eternal September. Many have grown up and grown out of Tumblr, others are working full time again so the content shift is beginning. Once clean 400px wide multimedia page layouts are peppered with glittery trinkets, customer mouse pointers, and encumbering music players. Tweens have settled in with duckfaces and shameless personal drama. The Corporations have also stepped in, trying to slick up their wardrobe, wanting to blend in with the cool crowd. It's not a complete wasteland but Tumblr has traded wrestling one monster for another. Though still an enviable position, who doesn't want to be the guy trying to come up with strategies of how to deal with a billion pageviews? Then again, who does? But running the business like the adults its original and most passionate users have become would be a start.

iamdave 16y ago
4chan-lite == reddit??

pclark 16y ago

Love tumblr, love the community, love the design, but god it feels like it's tied together with string. About two years ago I made the simple request of allowing me to not auto tweet content when posted with bookmarklet (it. would. just. be. a. checkbox.) but it never happened, i think they replied and said they didn't plan it. there's no importer for wordpress or any other content. the way you repost stuff is atrocious. i love the concept, but it has no concept of who originally posted it when you quote something, leading to the worlds most horrendous spaghetti of html for you to deal with (eg: http://grab.by/6iqJ http://grab.by/6iqJ) Tumblr has got all the hard stuff right, and is seemingly failing at the easy technical stuff :(

kmfrk 16y ago
This is the part of the last 5% of polish that can be so important to intermediate super users, because they need everything to be in order before they settle and keep using the platform. When you reach a point when you don't feel that they are perfecting the problem - and have the passion - and just tweaking the back-end, you start to lose hope and consider the alternatives. It doesn't feel like someone who still want to fix a problem and create something that they themselves would love. This applies to many of my experiences, some of which were Disqus and Forrst.
jmahoney 16y ago
The whole reposting while keeping attribution has been tidied up a lot this week: http://staff.tumblr.com/post/1059624418/content-attribution http://staff.tumblr.com/post/1059624418/content-attribution
- zach-inglis 16y ago
  I agree that this is good news.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
biturd 16y ago
I seem to be able to toggle on and off the twitter settings. I use markdown mode, and when I reblog something, I just delete all the copy in the text area, an attribute line is still given to the original source. Or I can par it down and quote one of the other rebloggers, but usually feel it is best to site the source, which happens automatically.
code_duck 16y ago
Sounds a lot like Etsy. It takes them years to implement simple feature requests (which are repeated by thousands of customers). Then, when they do, if ever, the implementation and design are botched.

joey_bananas 16y ago

The no. 1 reason tumbler sucks: 1 original content site for every 1000 reposting shitheaps. Also, people using it for posting info that would be much better presented in some other way. I'm looking at you safariextensions.tumblr.com, your site is pretty much worthless thanks to the decision to use tumblr.

kmfrk 16y ago
That's a community problem; if you subscribe to a Tumblr blog (tumblelog, microblog, etc.) like you would with any other blog, this wouldn't be a problem. It's a Tumblr problem for Tumblr users. Many people - not necessarily you - tend to forget that Tumblr is (also) a blogging platform when used outside of the - atrocious - Dashboard. You wouldn't say the same about Blogger or Wordpress, for instance; at least it doesn't look like crap in Tumblr. Tumblr has definitely created a trend and affected the blogscape with its laudable ease with which you can publish content online, and it certainly has its pros and cons. Most of the cons only exist if you focus on them.

mikecane 16y ago

If you post from a Windows PC, your data is trapped until they deign to create an export app (WTF!) to pull out the data. Ridiculous! I can pull my stuff out of WordPress by doing Export XML. That they require an app is just plain screwy.

kmfrk 16y ago
If they design one such. With Marco's anti-Microsoft proclivities, such a thing might never see the light of day.
- mikecane 16y ago
  Then they should offer to do the damned export on their end with their Macs. I don't care if I have to wait a week or a month. I'm not using Tumblr anymore. Just give me my damned XML.
jmahoney 16y ago
Your data is hardly trapped. You can export any or all of your posts as xml using the Tumblr api (http://tumblr.com/api http://tumblr.com/api) and your browser. eg http://we-heart-sci-fi.tumblr.com/api/read http://we-heart-sci-fi.tumblr.com/api/read There are any number of scripts/gists/pasties around the web that will give a simple script to download your posts.
- mikecane 16y ago
  >>>There are any number of scripts/gists/pasties around the web that will give a simple script to download your posts. So, Tumblr is a site where you can press a button to put stuff in but you have to deal with the stuff you just listed to get it back out. You've made half my own point there.

holman 16y ago

> 70% uptime. I really hate to be "that" dude, but... [CITATION NEEDED]

jw84 16y ago
No actual numbers but it's been up and down quite often. What's more important is that the users FEEL the downtime is annoying.
- kmfrk 16y ago
  When isn't downtime annoying? I'll manage and live a happy life as soon as they replace the weird 404. I wouldn't be surprised that the general uptime isn't great, but it's not that often that Tumblr is available an entire day.
  - jw84 16y ago
    When you can still live with it enough not to point it out. But the point has been brought.
  - kmfrk 16y ago
    "Is unavailable an entire day."* The irony isn't lost on me.
nphase 16y ago
Let me fix that for you: [1]: http://zachinglis.com/2010/why-tumblr-sucks/ http://zachinglis.com/2010/why-tumblr-sucks/ "What feels like 70% uptime"
smackfu 16y ago
If you are down all day every Monday, that's still 85% uptime. Hyperbole is awesome!

kmfrk 16y ago

On another note, the Terry Richardson accusations hardly seem to have been proven nor resulted in any prosecution that I know of. Bashing Tumblr for what they've obviously done is O.K., but TR shouldn't be slandered on account of dubious claims.

erikpukinskis 16y ago
That's absurd. The OP claims that TR was accused of coercing models into sleeping with him. TR was without question accused... the accusations are published everywhere. As for the merit of the accusations... There is a litany of models who say that they felt coerced by him. If they felt coerced, then they were coerced. End of story. Maybe you feel they shouldn't have let themselves be coerced, but that doesn't change the fact that they were.
ilovecomputers 16y ago
Also, it is irrelevant.

acabal 16y ago

A little off topic, but was anyone else bothered by the fact that his picture is overlapping the navigation buttons on Ubuntu Firefox so that I can't click 'Home', 'TL;DR', or 'Archives'? This plus the fact that I'm looking at a web developer's website made me think twice about what he had to say without even having read it. Edit: having read this, the guy sounds like a hack. While I don't use Tumblr myself, the author makes a lot of baseless assumptions about Tumblr's systems as if they were fact. For all he (or we) know, there might be good technical reasons why things aren't aligned with his own blogging nirvana. Having been on the author's side of the table (the customer who is also a developer) along with Tumblr's side (the big company with a probably complex back-end), I want to say that when the author makes totally unverified assumptions about how a site's SELECT queries work, pulls percentages out of thin air, and smacks the table and shouting "BUT THIS FEATURE SHOULD BE SO EASY TO IMPLEMENT, ARG, LOOK HOW THEY 'HACKED' IT TOGETHER," it just highlight the author's ignorance. Edit 2: Wow, bashing them for having their picture taken with a celebrity you don't like? Saying they're a bad service and calling them slackers because they don't have a revenue model yet? Really?! How did this even get on HN?

zach-inglis 16y ago
If you think less of me because my website has only been out for 3 days and has issues, then you are being hypocritical. I know what I am talking about too. I have worked on small sites upto ones with hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank. I realise they have scaling issues but let's be fair: Twitter had less of a problem. So you are saying it's well put together? I have made plenty of examples on how it fails and on its serious lack of stability. I have heard many a person say they has issues. If they had behaved with grace at all throughout my dealings with them, maybe I would be more sympathetic. Remember, politeness is free and there is no scalability issues with that one. Its not about which celebrity, it's about there're being serious cries from me and many other tumblrs about the issues and all they do is roll out new features and faff about. As much as you want to call me a hack you have to admit one of the worst things to do to a codebase that has issues is add yet more features before you stabalize what you have.
- acabal 16y ago

Sephr 16y ago

Not to mention that the dashboard takes literally minutes to load (though it only seems to affect some users, including). They have never fixed it after multiple people have reported this.

c1sc0 16y ago
That's actually the only thing that bothers me about tumblr, but not enough to switch

thehodge 16y ago

Having created a tumblr account for a mini blog of quotes from our office (http://hodgeoffice.tumblr.com http://hodgeoffice.tumblr.com) it frustrates me that I have to change the URL to tumblr.com to post anything on it, theres no dashboard button on the subdomain even when Tumblr knows I'm logged in... unless I'm missing something

cmelbye 16y ago
It's in the top right corner: http://cl.ly/2Ivj http://cl.ly/2Ivj
- thehodge 16y ago
  I'm an idiot, thanks :)

suhail 16y ago

A bit over the top. Looking from Tumblr's perspective, yes over 4 years any company is bound to make technical mistakes. Should you sum them up in a blog post and say they suck? Probably not. I am sure the documented mistakes over the years have been resolved and fixed. It's understandable that this person is frustrated--Tumblr probably should do a better job serving it's power users who remain loyal and helped create the community it has.

shortformblog 16y ago

This feels contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. Not that there aren't good points here, but it just seems like somebody had to knock them down a peg. And you know, for all of the weaknesses with code pointed out in this post, the reason that the site has taken off is really its design and functionality. Fact of matter, no other hosted blogging platform offers its mix of simplicity, customizability (you can do a CRAPLOAD of stuff with this platform that you can't do with the free version of Wordpress.com, including ads) and user interaction. My guess: They'll solve the downtime issues. They'll solve the more technical issues. They'll even solve the customer service problems. The design backbone of the product is why. Twitter had the right design mentality and that's why the technical problems have slowly gone away. Weaknesses in design are harder to solve than technical problems. Unless you're Digg. Then you're screwed.

zachinglis 16y ago
I really hope so.
ohashi 16y ago
A culture of bad service and not paying attention to code details will be corrected later? My gut tells me that just isn't going to happen. Twitter had issues but I never got the feeling they weren't trying or listening.
- zachinglis 16y ago
  You got my point exactly! :)

karl11 16y ago

Just last week I couldn't login - I would get a "You don't have permissions to access this page" error. I e-mailed support and a few days later they responded saying the my account had "corrupted" and that they deleted it, and that I would be able to make a new account with the same name. Awesome service. Definitely going with Posterous.

zachinglis 16y ago
I would love to add that to my blog post if you have a screenshot?
- karl11 16y ago
  Sent to the email posted on your site! And I should add now that I've looked back at the email that they did respond within 24hrs, but the response was as I described.

terra_t 16y ago

isn't it just some kind of black hat spam site that's written by Markov chains?

jakerocheleau 16y ago

It seems like the article is mostly bashing Tumblr as a professional blogging platform, which I agree it's not. Tumblr is supposed to be a micro-blogging platform for networking and sharing small bits of posts, photos, music, videos, etc... Either way haters gonna hate

zach-inglis 16y ago
I did not start out hating it. The community has been an integral part of my life the last few years, such as meeting my best friend I now live with.

ivankirigin 16y ago

I've had almost no problems

beza1e1 16y ago

I'm still using it http://compilers.tumblr.com/ http://compilers.tumblr.com/ because it has the best bookmarklet i have used so far. I even use the bookmarklet to enter free text posts without a link to the current page.

gbrindisi 16y ago
Have you tried the Posterous bookmarklet? I think it's way better and super easy to use. I had a couple issues with Tumblr bookmarklet, like not opening at all (even crashing my Chrome tab) or not formatting properly my post.
- beza1e1 16y ago
  Just tried it. I like it that the tumblr bookmarklet opens in its own window. However, Posterous improves by finding an abstract automatically.

rakkhi 16y ago

I use blogger because I'm a bit of a google fanboy. It is a bit old fashioned but solid as a rock. Simple to add in whatever I want via html/java gadget. Still though I was thinking of moving my blog (http://www.rakkhis.com http://www.rakkhis.com) to Tumblr or Posterous. Has anyone done this? How hard is it? I have moved my comments to Disqus to make this process easier. Now just my articles... Still this post makes me think maybe Tumblr is not the way to go?

ebun 16y ago
I moved from Blogger to Posterous some time back. The migration is pretty simple but there was one problem: my private/unpublished posts from Blogger became private in Posterous. I had to go through and manually set them back to private. This was before Posterous started aggressively pushing for moves from other platforms to themselves though, so that issue may have been fixed.

zachinglis 16y ago

I also forgot this… http://altreport.hipsterrunoff.com/2010/02/pitchfork-steals-url-to-start-a-tumblr-tumblr-facing-big-brother-backlash.html http://altreport.hipsterrunoff.com/2010/02/pitchfork-steals-...

icodeforlove 16y ago

I have been experiencing horrible API downtime’s for the past 3 days. When a developer is working with a brittle API that can be up one minute, and down for hours it becomes extremely frustrating. So yesterday I had to ask myself a few questions: 1) Do I still like tumblr? 2) Are they worth it? The answers for me were Yes, and Yes… So I created a page/service to make tracking down the uptime/downtime issues a bit easier, if you’re interested in my API then hit me up @icodeforlove Here is the page: http://tumblruptime.icodeforlove.com/ http://tumblruptime.icodeforlove.com/