Usage Analysis: Tumblr

The first thing I tend to notice is the amount of damaging or "triggering" posts, anything from eating disorders to mental health, depression, sexual fantasies and more. The anonymity of the site allows a lot of people to "come out of their shells" and start to talk about what's on their mind.

Unfortunately, when you take away the shame of public and open speech, you tend to find that the worst parts of humanity start to see through - there are entire blogs devoted to losing weight, anorexia and pictures of women with impossible physiques, creating a circle jerk culture of unhappiness and lustful ideology.

Of course, in regards to user experience, the content is user created, so if the prevalence of these kinds of posts says anything it is that this is what the people who use the site want to see, judging by the tens or hundreds of thousand of re-blogs they tend to receive.

However, if you ignore the seediness of the anonymous world for a moment, you can also see the good in the site, there is a lot of art which would otherwise be hidden from the world, beautiful poetry and pictures and there seems to be an inherent nature in the people to stick with each other, giving one another support and advice whenever they need it.

This can be seen especially in terms of suicide and depression, where there are people posting about their self harm troubles and other people sending them "asks" to support them and tell them it will all be okay, it becomes somewhat of a massive online support group. These people don't feel like they can talk to people in the real world, their counselors and family don't understand so they come online for their fix of advice and help, to actually feel wanted and loved and cared for.

This is something which websites like Facebook and Twitter tend to miss, for better or worse, our profiles there are normally tied to our identities, we can't talk about these private things because then people in our real lives will know our most inner most fears and troubles, the sick people behind our normal exterior, so they use Tumblr to express this part of them.

My experience is that as long as they are relevant/focused enough, tags can actually work. One can discover good content and interesting people by following the relevant tag, and if you tag your post well, (at least some) people will see it (and like, reblog it, whatever). Because of that you can login without knowing a single other user on the service, and still quickly start to interact with like-minded people.

Somehow, it's not true for all topics, though. Tech related tags are fairly empty.

I'd argue a much more interesting look at Tumblr would take into account:

- how corporate tumblrs are incredibly effective compared to often-terrible corporate Twitters (part of this is sort of predestination: if a person is smart/savvy enough to have a Tumblr, he'll probably have a higher level of social media acumen overall)

- the theming system of tumblr. before tumblr became large enough that it's userbase was attractive on its own merits, the customizability was a huge selling point, and attracted the graphic/web vertical to contribute both as developers and users

- the overall shift of tumblr from production to consumption, with stuff like the in-dashboard compose form and the relatively new emphasis on reblogging

Is this not also the case for Twitter and Google+? Most people use Twitter to follow news, celebrities, and taste makers. And with Google+ it's likely you're friends and family aren't all on it and with Circles it's meant to be used to follow more than just that select group of people.

Edit:

>> "Tumblr did something remarkably intelligent; they made your follower count private."

I think that's a very good point. It prevents users feeling 'embarrassed' that they don't have enough followers. I'm sure Twitter sees huge numbers of people drop off after a few days because they don't have any followers - it's something I've seen amongst my own friends. I would argue though the followers aren't much of a reward system. I feel much more rewarded when I see my post get reblogged and quickly pick up steam getting reblogged by people that don't follow me. I think reblogs are the main reward system, followed by likes, and finally followers.

Use the screenshots to show what Tumblr does well or not so well. Use them to show how other sites do it well and what Tumblr should copy/implement.

Also, the OP doesn't touch on the most unique part of Tumblr, which is its not-quite-a-blog but more-than-a-tweet niche. Its format is very limited...you have several types of posts to choose from (photo, quote, text, video) and when you pick a format, you are stuck to a rigid form...for photos, you enter a caption and upload a photo (or photoset)...and that's it. You can hack around the constraints but it is difficult...and yet, this ends up making tumblr more inviting, because of the lack of setup involved. Constraints are freedom, sometimes.