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Re: Tumblr

#71

Post by errantspark »

newen wrote: post #61
errantspark wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/261925/unique-visitors-t... Yeah ok, whatever. I don't doubt that it's still a viable business, I don't care. I feel a deep pain every time I think about it. Something beautiful was destroyed with no remorse. The world is worse off because of it. It feels like tearing down statues of the buddha. The one place on the internet where one could explore explicit sexuality without feelin…

It's just porn, chill

It's not, and I won't.

It's about having a safe community for self expression through sexual art. It's about a set of deeply regressive (American) cultural norms that stifle sexual expression and further marginalize non-normative individuals. It's about the death of a vibrant community that made people feel included and valued. It's about sex-positivity. It's about destigmatizing overt sexual expression.

Re: Tumblr

#72

Post by Causality1 »

untog wrote: post #47
_bxg1 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Verizon didn't just fail to figure out what to do with Tumblr, it dealt what was nearly a death blow by changing its policy on adult content - one of the platform's biggest remaining pillars of core users. Tumblr doesn't still exist because of its features; it exists because of its communities. Leave it to Verizon to not just starve a golden goose, but shoot it in the head.

According to Matt Mullenweg, that's not true: > One of the things that really surprised me is I thought — as probably many do — that Tumblr had kind of died under its variety of corporate parents. And then actually being able to see some of the numbers, including some the numbers post-when they changed the adult content policy. I was like, “Wow, this has still got a ton going on.” https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/14/2…

According to the person with the single largest imaginable reason to sugarcoat it, you mean. The numbers look terrible.

https://i.imgur.com/IyvL1bA.jpg

Re: Tumblr

#73

Post by panopticon »

nostrademons wrote: post #26
laser wrote: post #14

I had heard the "well below 20m" figure and couldn't believe it—and now Fred is saying they dumped it for $3 million? I suppose if Verizon is taking the tax deduction on an original $1.1 billion purchase by Yahoo, the value of the deduction so much dwarfs the sale price that the difference to Yahoo between a $3 million sale price and a $50 million sale price is pretty minimal—they just want to close the deal to take…

IMHO Wordpress itself is grossly undervalued. I've done some whole-web analysis and they (including both the open-source project and the hosted service) account for roughly 18% of the web. The volume of content produced on them (in terms of # of words, not # of messages) is greater than on Twitter. If you look at comparables - with Twitter valued at $30B, Reddit at $3B, and Wordpress valued at $1.16B - it's pretty ha…

I think investors like the fact that Twitter and Reddit control all of the user data and (mostly) where and how it's surfaced. The idea is they can somehow monetize this data (e.g., ad revenue).

Obviously they haven't been able to do that yet. There's a chance those platforms are very over-valued... but you can see where some people think the golden goose is.

Re: Tumblr

#74

Post by evanelias »

errantspark wrote: post #57
untog wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Matt Mullenweg, that's not true: > One of the things that really surprised me is I thought — as probably many do — that Tumblr had kind of died under its variety of corporate parents. And then actually being able to see some of the numbers, including some the numbers post-when they changed the adult content policy. I was like, “Wow, this has still got a ton going on.” https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/14/2…

https://www.statista.com/statistics/261925/unique-visitors-t... Yeah ok, whatever. I don't doubt that it's still a viable business, I don't care. I feel a deep pain every time I think about it. Something beautiful was destroyed with no remorse. The world is worse off because of it. It feels like tearing down statues of the buddha. The one place on the internet where one could explore explicit sexuality without feelin…

Tumblr lost ~70% of its engagement in the 5 years prior to the adult content ban. The adult content ban was a drop in the bucket, numerically speaking. This graph is an accurate depiction: https://twitter.com/somospostpc/status/1161024458460712962

Also keep in mind a decent chunk of the adult content was literally automated bot spam.

Meanwhile, Statista's graph appears to be made of random numbers with no basis in reality whatsoever. They claim that even post-adult-content-ban, Tumblr has more MAUs than Twitter and Snapchat combined. Factor in Tumblr's 70% drop vs historic peak usage, and you'd end up with a number claiming Tumblr was once the most popular tech product on earth. This is quite obviously a complete fabrication.

If you want to be sad or angry about something, the loss of old peak Tumblr -- when it combined the best aspects of Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Reddit -- is a better target in my mind. Its decline was long and slow over many years.

(Disclosure: I was one of Tumblr's first engineers, and later director of platform engineering. I had no involvement whatsoever in the adult content ban, but nonetheless find it frustrating when people significantly overstate the amount of adult content on Tumblr. At its peak it contained an extremely diverse set of communities, and I fear this is being completely lost in revisionist rhetoric.)

Re: Tumblr

#75

Post by evanelias »

henrikschroder wrote: post #66
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Verizon didn't buy Tumblr. Verizon bought Yahoo/Oath and ended up with Tumblr. It's a very different scenario. It's important to remember that Tumblr never turned a profit; as far as I've been able to determine it never hit the break-even point. And the bottom line is that a giant service that's losing money is worse to own than a tiny service that's losing money. Verizon's attempt to kick out the NSFW parts wasn't s…

> Verizon bought Yahoo/Oath Verizon had ATH - AOL, TechCrunch, Huffington Post, then bought and added yahoO to the group, hence the name. Yes, that is exactly how uninspired these corporate names are.

Do you have a source for that? I worked there at the time of this unholy merger, and that explanation for the name was never given.

From what I recall, Tim Armstrong claimed the name reflected Verizon's promise to do right by AOL and Yahoo, or some other such complete nonsense. Internally, everyone I knew thought it was on par with Tronc for worst rebrand ever.

Re: Tumblr

#76

Post by [deleted] »

nostrademons wrote: post #26
laser wrote: post #14

I had heard the "well below 20m" figure and couldn't believe it—and now Fred is saying they dumped it for $3 million? I suppose if Verizon is taking the tax deduction on an original $1.1 billion purchase by Yahoo, the value of the deduction so much dwarfs the sale price that the difference to Yahoo between a $3 million sale price and a $50 million sale price is pretty minimal—they just want to close the deal to take…

IMHO Wordpress itself is grossly undervalued. I've done some whole-web analysis and they (including both the open-source project and the hosted service) account for roughly 18% of the web. The volume of content produced on them (in terms of # of words, not # of messages) is greater than on Twitter. If you look at comparables - with Twitter valued at $30B, Reddit at $3B, and Wordpress valued at $1.16B - it's pretty ha…

[deleted]

Re: Tumblr

#77

Post by erikpukinskis »

galfarragem wrote: post #7

Tumblr is an hidden secret and totally underrated. I run two niche blogs on tumblr since 2011 with full control of themes and content, https, social sharing, without compulsory ads and using my own domain. SEO was a negative point but nowadays is good enough. All of this for free. Wordpress offer, AFAIK, is not nearly as good. Thank you Tumblr.

I agree, I use it to look at paintings and to blog about painters I am researching and it’s wonderful the depth and breadth of content available on so many subjects. My feed is overflowing and I’ve only skimmed the surface.

Re: Tumblr

#78

Post by errantspark »

evanelias wrote: post #74
errantspark wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/261925/unique-visitors-t... Yeah ok, whatever. I don't doubt that it's still a viable business, I don't care. I feel a deep pain every time I think about it. Something beautiful was destroyed with no remorse. The world is worse off because of it. It feels like tearing down statues of the buddha. The one place on the internet where one could explore explicit sexuality without feelin…

Tumblr lost ~70% of its engagement in the 5 years prior to the adult content ban. The adult content ban was a drop in the bucket, numerically speaking. This graph is an accurate depiction: https://twitter.com/somospostpc/status/1161024458460712962 Also keep in mind a decent chunk of the adult content was literally automated bot spam . Meanwhile, Statista's graph appears to be made of random numbers with no basis in r…

I don't think MAUs === how good a site is. I wasn't even a particularly active tumblr user at any point, I can't really say if it was much better 5 years ago. I do not want to be angry or sad about something. I'm just sharing my subjective experience and publicly mourning the loss of something that was valuable to me. I found a lot of positivity and value in the adult content on tumblr. It was of a flavor much more palatable to me than what I tend to find on the rest of the internet.

Re: Tumblr

#79

Post by zanny »

codesushi42 wrote: post #12
mooreds wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate to say it, but what do you mean by "stuck"? Stuck in what way?

There are no good, open alternatives that are widely used.

There are plenty of Mastodon instances revolving around almost any topic out there to join.

Having a successful social space does not necessitate, and I'd argue precludes, having a universal audience of everyone.

Also, you are currently on what would qualify as a social network, and between HN, Mastodon, and choice tech subreddits like I find myself well inundated with social forums to talk about stuff on. Thats even precluding how Github and Gitlab have turned into faux social networks around projects, how IRC and Matrix exist as real time chat options, etc.

Re: Tumblr

#80

Post by wbc »

evanelias wrote: post #74
errantspark wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/261925/unique-visitors-t... Yeah ok, whatever. I don't doubt that it's still a viable business, I don't care. I feel a deep pain every time I think about it. Something beautiful was destroyed with no remorse. The world is worse off because of it. It feels like tearing down statues of the buddha. The one place on the internet where one could explore explicit sexuality without feelin…

Tumblr lost ~70% of its engagement in the 5 years prior to the adult content ban. The adult content ban was a drop in the bucket, numerically speaking. This graph is an accurate depiction: https://twitter.com/somospostpc/status/1161024458460712962 Also keep in mind a decent chunk of the adult content was literally automated bot spam . Meanwhile, Statista's graph appears to be made of random numbers with no basis in r…

Thank you for sharing, were you there when Yahoo/Verizon took over? IYO was the decline due to that or more that Tumblr itself just peaked like so many other social networks?
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