the four things that bug me about tumblr
In my previous post, I professed an undying love to all things Tumblr. I apologize for gushing. There is a teenage girl in all of us (we also contain an elderly but suprisingly agile Chinese man and an overly assertive New York waiter, but enough with the Jungian archtypes). Returning to the topic at hand, and in the interests of journalistic balance, I thought it would be best to list the five four things that bug me about Tumblr. Here they are, in no particular order:
1) Tumblr can get way too pseudo-Bohemian for my liking sometimes. I often wonder if everyone is trying just a little too hard to be hip. A perfect example would be the popularity of a photo of an empty expresso cup sitting next to a half-eaten bagel (an image, I am told, that constitutes the foundational ethic of the nouveau arte while at the same time offering a not-so-subtle meta-critique of metropolitan rituals). While I certainly appreciate individual creativity, all of the people who are trying to be cool are really starting to piss off those of us who are.
2) At the present moment, all of my content is locked into the Tumblr platform. I would like to be able to export my content in an extensible format that does not depend on whether or not Tumblr’s servers are alive or dead. I would like my work to be protected against the off-chance that, for whatever reason, I have to move to another platform. Of course, all of this assumes that my work is of some value. As my humble readers are certainly aware, this has by no means been proven.
3) The dashboard can be painful at times. A new UI is badly needed. Since I suspect that changes to the dashboard are probably pending, I don’t see any reason to say anything more about this than the obvious, ‘it doesn’t scale well’.
4) Tumblr is run by a small group of people who appear to be very cool, level-headed, and not without a sense of humour. At the same time, though, I always get worried by any consolidation of power. What would happen, for instance, if you were to publish something that really pissed off these core staffers and their loyal supporters? Would you be saying goodbye to reblogs and a shot a radar fame? I dunno. Fanboys are notoriously unforgiving.
All of this said, I remain loyal to Tumblr and eagerly await the rumored pro version. I am more than willing to spend a few bucks to address some of the issues mentioned above. In the meantime, if anybody has any tips on how I can easily export my content or clean up my dashboard, please feel free to reblog this with your suggestions or fire me an email.
