tumblr is awesome, worth it to use even with horrible downtime, but it's getting really weird how they never talk about anything relating to ops/roadmap/product (good or bad)
Long version:
I'm hesitant to dis tumblr to an audience i'm not sure has tried tumblr. i'm always scared i'll send the wrong message. Tumblr is mostly amazing, extremely valuable, and actually trying to do something interesting + valuable for its users. (From the outside it's hard to see. But as with Twitter, the inside view of using it reveals all sorts of interactions and relationships that make it awesome + addictive.)
Main point? You should use tumblr. It's not just a blog platform. It's a place to discover awesome content, connect with interesting folks, and get your stuff heard really easily.
But... those of us who have used tumblr for a while have different conversations amongst ourselves.
Aside from performance, Tumblr has been buggy for an extremely long time. Since before its recent spike in popularity and sharp growth. In fact, I almost get bummed when the topic of performance issues come up because i fear that attention to broken things like Dashboard search, saved tags, group blogs, etc... will get overlooked.
Their API is also a bit stagnant, which even if you're not a dev, means less cool stuff you can do w/all the amazing content + people in Tumblr.
As kylebragger wrote above, it's surreal how Tumblr does not mention a thing. They don't have a status blog. They don't have a user forum where we can talk about Tumblr best practices. (There is an abandoned Get Satisfaction presence). They don't have a place to suggest features for users, or developers. No Uservoice. No mailing list. They have a blog which is about 80% recommending fun Tumblrs to follow. They also announce apps. They have a couple of times addressed bugginess around a feature, queues, but only after they felt they fixed it.
This makes me think they are probably working on some giant code bomb that will fix everything, and don't want talk about stuff until they have good news. I understand that, but don't agree with it. It's literally been years. It's just more acute now than it's been before.
Anyway, I don't hate Tumblr, I LOVE tumblr. I recommend it to tons of people. Even if it's down 2 hours every day, i'll still recommend it.
But it is not cool how they never talk about stuff. I get that transparency is not the only style of community and product management. (Something something Steve Jobs Apple.)
But I think it's a bad fit here. Also, even Apple writes (in their own control freaky way) about big issues that everybody is talking about (AppStore scandals, antennagate, etc.)