4 ms·

Why should I understand Tumblr or any other product? I and others as well were happy with just reading the ramblings of other Internet users. As for the other s

Why should I understand Tumblr or any other product? I and others as well were happy with just reading the ramblings of other Internet users. As for the other side, publishing your texts or photos on the Internet for others to view, isn't enough?

evanelias 5y ago
> Why should I understand Tumblr or any other product? I and others as well were happy with just reading the ramblings of other Internet users. I mean, no one's forcing you to. That's my point though! Casual web visitors to the public-facing (no account needed) portion of the product simply aren't exposed to the majority of the product, and have a sub-par experience as a result. This reduces the likelihood of the product being successful. Some products try to solve this with a hard login wall, but that's problematic for both casual viewers as well as a portion of the content creators. There's no good solution. In the example of Tumblr, even if you just want to consume content without posting anything, the reading experience is much better in the logged-in dashboard (newsfeed / activity stream) vs separately visiting random blogs that all have different themes. > As for the other side, publishing your texts or photos on the Internet for others to view, isn't enough? If you want to just publish photos, you can use a product that specializes in this, rather than choosing a combination publishing site / social network where the community interaction is inherently a huge part of the product.
- lostdog 5y ago
  > Casual web visitors to the public-facing portion aren't exposed to the majority of the product, and have a sub-par experience as a result. No, their experiences are perfectly fine. Maybe the company believes that monetization is worse when account-free users read the site, but being account-free is an ideal experience for the majority of users. Companies love to lie about this, both externally and internally.
  - evanelias 5y ago
    I'm talking strictly from the standpoint of a user of web-based social products. For any product with a substantial communication and/or community aspect, you inherently can't use most of the product's functionality if you don't have an account. And if the product doesn't do a good job of explaining its purpose, you won't even fully understand what functionality you're missing out on. Going back to my Tumblr example, I've had a lot of conversations with people on HN who fundamentally didn't grok that there's substantially more to the product than the public-facing blog network, in part because there isn't a login wall. A few examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28607197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28607197 (interesting quote further downthread "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.") https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29700519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29700519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29958173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29958173
    - ciupicri 5y ago
      So instead of Tumblr providing a better user interface that includes timestamps or lets you filter "reactions" or commments, casual reards should sign up to Tumblr.
      - evanelias 5y ago
        Your comments prove my point exactly. The public-facing blog network (which has no login wall and does not require an account) uses a templated theme system. The blog author can make it look however they want! Some blogs choose themes which omit these things, or use a custom theme and choose to omit these things. That makes the user interface worse! Meanwhile the Tumblr dashboard (logged in user experience / social network side) has a uniform user interface which does provide these things. But there is no way for Tumblr to prevent this problem on the blog side while still allowing users to have full control over their blog's public appearance. If they forced themes to contain specific template tags or design elements, it would no longer be usable as a freeform CMS. Same reason Tumblr doesn't/can't have a login wall. But as a result of this, casual readers get a mistaken impression of the product and its capabilities.

evanelias 5y ago

> Why should I understand Tumblr or any other product? I and others as well were happy with just reading the ramblings of other Internet users. I mean, no one's forcing you to. That's my point though! Casual web visitors to the public-facing (no account needed) portion of the product simply aren't exposed to the majority of the product, and have a sub-par experience as a result. This reduces the likelihood of the product being successful. Some products try to solve this with a hard login wall, but that's problematic for both casual viewers as well as a portion of the content creators. There's no good solution. In the example of Tumblr, even if you just want to consume content without posting anything, the reading experience is much better in the logged-in dashboard (newsfeed / activity stream) vs separately visiting random blogs that all have different themes. > As for the other side, publishing your texts or photos on the Internet for others to view, isn't enough? If you want to just publish photos, you can use a product that specializes in this, rather than choosing a combination publishing site / social network where the community interaction is inherently a huge part of the product.

lostdog 5y ago
> Casual web visitors to the public-facing portion aren't exposed to the majority of the product, and have a sub-par experience as a result. No, their experiences are perfectly fine. Maybe the company believes that monetization is worse when account-free users read the site, but being account-free is an ideal experience for the majority of users. Companies love to lie about this, both externally and internally.
- evanelias 5y ago
  I'm talking strictly from the standpoint of a user of web-based social products. For any product with a substantial communication and/or community aspect, you inherently can't use most of the product's functionality if you don't have an account. And if the product doesn't do a good job of explaining its purpose, you won't even fully understand what functionality you're missing out on. Going back to my Tumblr example, I've had a lot of conversations with people on HN who fundamentally didn't grok that there's substantially more to the product than the public-facing blog network, in part because there isn't a login wall. A few examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28607197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28607197 (interesting quote further downthread "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.") https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29700519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29700519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29958173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29958173
  - ciupicri 5y ago
    So instead of Tumblr providing a better user interface that includes timestamps or lets you filter "reactions" or commments, casual reards should sign up to Tumblr.
    - evanelias 5y ago
      Your comments prove my point exactly. The public-facing blog network (which has no login wall and does not require an account) uses a templated theme system. The blog author can make it look however they want! Some blogs choose themes which omit these things, or use a custom theme and choose to omit these things. That makes the user interface worse! Meanwhile the Tumblr dashboard (logged in user experience / social network side) has a uniform user interface which does provide these things. But there is no way for Tumblr to prevent this problem on the blog side while still allowing users to have full control over their blog's public appearance. If they forced themes to contain specific template tags or design elements, it would no longer be usable as a freeform CMS. Same reason Tumblr doesn't/can't have a login wall. But as a result of this, casual readers get a mistaken impression of the product and its capabilities.