Comments on: I don’t like Tumblr

By: Cezary

Cezary — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 13:59:29 +0000

I’ll invent some perception enhancer for you, you’ll see.

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 21:25:52 +0000

at what point do we get to new, cool, shiny, pretty web app overload?

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 10:06:44 +0000

Hi Veronica,

Tumblr isn’t for lifestream. You could add your Rss feeds to the main content, but it’s not his best feature. If you take time to explore Tumblrs you’ll find Pics, Quotes and Videos that people want to share with readers.

That’s the thing that make Tumblr very usefull!

By: Yum9me's Journal » Aggregating

Yum9me's Journal » Aggregating — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 20:03:44 +0000

[...] Belmont recently wrote an article on her blog about how she doesn’t like Tumblr. The reason behind it was because of people [...]

By: Steve Banfield

Steve Banfield — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 23:14:21 +0000

I’ve had this exact problem — I basically punted on my Typepad blog except for “big” stuff and now I’m posting photos, links, etc to Tumblr. I’ve changed my Feedburner feed to it, I’ve updated my email sig to include the Tumblr adress. I’ve gone over completely.

But I have had a hard time figuring out which feeds to point at Tumblr. I didn’t point Flickr at it for exactly that reason. I have pointed Twitter at it but am not sure I like it that way. Even using MoodBlast on my Mac I’ve had to turn off using it to update Tumblr or the posts get listed twice — once for Twitter and once on Tumblr proper. I’m curious to see if other folks are going to be like me and turn off Twitter updates to Tumblr.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 06:13:02 +0000

There are so many other services that excel at creating lifestreams (i.e. aggregating all your other feeds), I wish folks would just use Tumblr as it was first conceived. A quick, fun, microblogging platform (and even further, ‘blogging’ in the original sense of the word).

I read the tumblelogs of people that tumble interesting things on the web. Random quotes, videos, IM conversations, things that are too small or random to warrant a blog writeup, but too fun to ignore. And that’s what I do with mine.

If someone wants to see “all my feeds” - from Plazer updates to iTunes plays - that’s what Profilactic, Ziki, ClaimID, Correlate.us, iStalkr, and OnaSwarm is for. Places where people don’t publish original stuff, but aggregate stuff from someplace else.

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 02:32:59 +0000

I use my tumblelog for personal use only. Rather than using del.icio.us for all my bookmarks, google notebook foe web snippets, flickr, and all those other services, I use tumblr. Its “Share on Tumblr” javascript browser bookmark is really useful for surfing the net because you can grab just about anything. And, with tumblr, all of my things are in one place.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 20:09:58 +0000

A tumblelog (like any other blog) is what you make of it. Like several others here, my tumblelog has a minimum of aggregated feeds. I usually just post directly to it using their bookmarklet thing. It’s a place to put things that I find interesting which might also be interesting to others, and with little to no commentary. So it’s more of a microblog.

I used to aggregate my tweets there but decided that it was too much and that people could just follow me on Twitter instead. Same with my flickr photos; instead of aggregating the feed for all my photos, I’m importing the feed for a specific tag I can add to a photo that I want to show up. And then, I have links to other places on the side (Twitter, Last.fm, my regular blog, etc). I think walking that line is important. Too much overlap will lead to the feed burn-out you describe.

By: ashok

ashok — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 16:42:56 +0000

Another problem with tumblelogs, I think, is what happens when they try to be “deep.” It’s always the same effect - you feel like you’re looking into someone’s life and trying to figure it out and put it all together and can’t. It’s like reminiscing over an ex. The feeling works for 2 seconds and then you realize that every tumble log is the same: perpetual emo.

I added you as a friend on Digg, btw - hope you don’t mind. I owe you for introducing me to Lijit (sp?).

By: kc

kc — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 21:36:48 +0000

i personally love tumblr. i don’t use it as an aggregator just a micro blog. I found it hard to get my friends to and family to join twitter becuase it was too webby for them, but they can visit a web page. and i found its a good way to get them to atleast test the web 2.0 water.

By: Zac Echola

Zac Echola — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 18:09:01 +0000

I like tumblr for posting quick items, especially from my cell phone.

I feed in a bunch of stuff to it like starred items in gReader, flickr photos and twitter posts. Oh and I suppose I also feed del.ico.us items tagged for my tumblr.

That said, I can’t stand anybodies tumblr feeds. I use the tumblr dashboard instead to scan through a few pages of posts. The name says it all, you have to let the items tumble over you.

Self restraint is important.

You can subscribe to my stuff individually, but you’re going to miss out on a lot of posts (quotes, videos and images, mostly).

By: Ben

Ben — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 12:25:52 +0000

Tumblr seems to combine all the feeds into one. For me, this is not useful as it does not show exactly where each item came from. (I use Google Reader).

I suppose it is like claimID where it combines identities but really, it is useless.

By: Andy DeSoto

Andy DeSoto — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 16:37:51 +0000

Something I really didn’t like about the feed import was that last.fm was EXTREMELY overwhelming– on my Tumblog, the 20 songs I just listened to on my iPod are weighted the same as the blog post I spent an hour writing. Doesn’t make a lot of sense!

Also– I don’t much care for the interface, either. It took about thirty minutes to delete the contents of the blog; I had imported a bunch of things I didn’t want anymore (e.g., last.fm news) and it was a pain to take care of them.

I’m still trying to love the service, though… maybe I’ll find a way to make it work!

By: gojeffrey

gojeffrey — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 21:58:01 +0000

I don’t aggregate any of my various postings (Twitter, Tumblr, Blog, another blog). If someone is that interested in seeing everything I have to say, then they can aggregate it themselves. That’s the beauty of Google Reader!

By: pradero

pradero — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:13:46 +0000

Good post, but i like tumblr.
Un beso.

By: Parrotheader

Parrotheader — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 07:06:56 +0000

I agree wholeheartedly. On my blog I setup a small feed widget to show recent posts by my friends on their various blogs/sites (which I aggregate via Yahoo Pipes.) One friend recently switched his main blog from Wordpress to Tumblr since he spends more time on all the social networks than actually blogging. The only problem is his single Tumblr blog started to flood that aggregated feed of about a dozen other people. I eventually had to add an extra set of parameters into Yahoo Pipes just to throttle his feed’s activity to keep it from overloading everyone else.

I can see the allure for a single ‘me’ feed. But why not just go into Yahoo Pipes and create your own aggregated feed (maybe even taking the time to set up proper balance) so that you can share THAT with people? That would seem a far better service to your friends IMO.

By: NEENZ:"InfinityPro"

NEENZ:"InfinityPro" — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 00:08:36 +0000

I like tumblr, but I also don’t use feeds. I feed everything into Jaiku, regularly blog, and post different things on my tumblr.

By: Project: Shadow Symposium » 2007 » November » 19

Project: Shadow Symposium » 2007 » November » 19 — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 00:02:10 +0000

[...] Tumblr Etiquette in Response to Veronica Belmont (re: Veronica’s Blog) [...]

By: callingbull

callingbull — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 21:12:47 +0000

It would be nice if Tumblr provided summarized RSS support i.e. daily summary of Twitter, Flickr. I think that would greatly reduce the feel of info overload.

By: Nicole Lee

Nicole Lee — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:46:29 +0000

That’s only if people abuse the RSS imports. Most of the people I subscribe to don’t do that

Also Kenn: You can indeed add comments to Tumblr, via a third party like HaloScan or Discus.