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If I understand correctly, were you just consuming Tumblr content directly from individual blogs? The user experience was generally better in the dashboard (ac

If I understand correctly, were you just consuming Tumblr content directly from individual blogs? The user experience was generally better in the dashboard (activity stream / feed for logged-in users). The dashboard was the vast majority of traffic; blog UI didn't get much staff/engineering attention as a result. The "notes" feature on Tumblr was absolutely never intended to be a "comment section", btw. There intentionally was no comment section at all originally. This notion was part of the conceptual difference between tumblelogging and traditional long-form blogging. Contextually, this mechanism came about at a time when comments (on blog posts, YouTube, etc) were complete cesspools of negativity from anonymous jerks. The Tumblr idea was that to respond to something, you would have to reblog it in order to add commentary. This way, if someone wants to spew nasty comments, their blog would be terrible and no one would choose to follow their blog.

jandrese 5y ago
So the concept is you would click through to every post to read it? I have to admit I never twigged on this, because it seems insane.
- evanelias 5y ago
  No, again, it was not meant to be a traditional comment section. It was not a discussion thread for casual readers, especially via the blog view. If you wanted a normal comment system, you could use Disqus embeds, or just use a traditional blogging software. The reblog system was a way for Tumblr users to publicly respond to things, and allow that response to be visible to the responder's followers. The original poster would also get a notification, and they could reblog the responder's reblog to add more if they wish. The dashboard made this slightly easier to read. Again, if you only ever experienced Tumblr on blog views and without an account, you literally never saw the core functionality that made Tumblr popular. Also, most Tumblr posts weren't long-form text to begin with. That wasn't the point of the platform.
  - vdqtp3 5y ago
    > if you only ever experienced Tumblr on blog views and without an account, you literally never saw the core functionality that made Tumblr popular. that explains quite a lot
  - jandrese 5y ago
    That explains it then. I never felt the need to make an account since I was just reading. They didn't make it clear that the service was incomplete without an account.
    - evanelias 5y ago
      Well, the alternative is an aggressive full-page signup nag that intentionally breaks product functionality when logged out -- an approach used to various degrees by Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, and others. Is that really preferable?

jandrese 5y ago

So the concept is you would click through to every post to read it? I have to admit I never twigged on this, because it seems insane.

evanelias 5y ago
No, again, it was not meant to be a traditional comment section. It was not a discussion thread for casual readers, especially via the blog view. If you wanted a normal comment system, you could use Disqus embeds, or just use a traditional blogging software. The reblog system was a way for Tumblr users to publicly respond to things, and allow that response to be visible to the responder's followers. The original poster would also get a notification, and they could reblog the responder's reblog to add more if they wish. The dashboard made this slightly easier to read. Again, if you only ever experienced Tumblr on blog views and without an account, you literally never saw the core functionality that made Tumblr popular. Also, most Tumblr posts weren't long-form text to begin with. That wasn't the point of the platform.
- vdqtp3 5y ago
  > if you only ever experienced Tumblr on blog views and without an account, you literally never saw the core functionality that made Tumblr popular. that explains quite a lot
- jandrese 5y ago
  That explains it then. I never felt the need to make an account since I was just reading. They didn't make it clear that the service was incomplete without an account.
  - evanelias 5y ago
    Well, the alternative is an aggressive full-page signup nag that intentionally breaks product functionality when logged out -- an approach used to various degrees by Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, and others. Is that really preferable?