The Problem With Tumblr

4 June 2011

Reblogging. 54 thousand ‘notes’ in a day. I’d guess half of those are reblogs and the other half ‘likes’, which makes 27 thousand blogs which all have the same content at the same time. I love Tumblr for it’s ad-free hosting of lots of images and easy theming system, and whilst the success of some Tumblr sites depends solely on the community aspect of Tumblr, the vast majority of said sites are really just a mashup of a thousand other blogs, all with the same horrific memes and animated GIF’s and the occasional topless tattooed emo girl (the exception to the GIF issue being If We Don’t, Remember Me).

So it’s somewhat ironic that Tumblr is seen as an easy way to create a directory of your personality, when in reality there are probably about 10 themes and 100 posts in circulation at any one time (exaggerated, but you get the idea). Tumblr isn’t a collection of lots of micro blogs, it’s instead a whole ecosystem; a single huge blog of memes.

Saying that, I saw Miles Barger’s Journal yesterday, not only an interesting take on the theming limitations (Tumblr’s max width for posts of 500px is ridiculous; its 2011 and my screen is 1440px wide) but also contains interesting content which appears pretty representative of his interests (he’s a cartographer).