There’s some press and publications like Verge asking What’s going on with Tumblr. I’m going to answer questions using the “ask” feature of Tumblr here, so everyone can see the answers. You must be logged in to ask, but use the AMA button at the top of my blog or this link.
We’re rolling out the ability to reply to posts as a sideblog across all platforms. Next to the reply input field, you can click/tap on the avatar to change what blog you’re replying as. All blogs are eligible, including group blogs, except for password protected blogs or blogs blocked by the post’s author. This is rolled out to everyone on the web, and for folks with version 31.6 or higher of the mobile apps.
We’ve also updated our “It’s time to update your app” notification banner in the mobile apps, for folks who are using (very) outdated versions. If you see that banner, then you’re using a version of the app that we explicitly no longer support, and it may stop working altogether until you update.
🛠 Fixed
We fixed a bug in Safari that was causing scrollbars to overlap with content in the masonry view of feeds like Explore, if you have your mac’s “Show scroll bars” setting set to “Always”.
We fixed a bug on the Likes view on web that was causing the expanded post to disappear if you went from Grid view to List view.
🚧 Ongoing
We’re aware of an issue in the iOS app that has broken screen reader support for post content. We’re working to fix this as quickly as we can and release a new version of the app with the fix.
We’re also aware of a technical issue that’s been preventing Trending topics from updating in Explore since Friday. We’re working to get those populated again as quickly as we can.
🌱 Upcoming
Nothing to report here today, you monsters.
Experiencing an issue?File a Support Request and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can!
Quick question and like, my bad if you've got 30 identical, much more hostile asks asking the same thing, but is staff going to do anything about trans people's posts getting auto flagged as "inappropriate"? K thnx drink water
We are working really hard to get all this corrected, but as Zandy points out here, it is a bit of a slow process. Hopefully things will start to seem less broken as we make progress. :)
Back in June, we announced our comeback as a new team that would imagine big ideas for Tumblr—and would build them in public (aka with you).
Today we’re very excited to announce our first failure. The first experiment we want to loudly, publicly admit didn’t work. We’re pretty excited about this because trying and failing are a big part of learning.
A little background
A few months ago, we ran interviews with lots of people on Tumblr to get a better sense of what works and what needs to be better.
Among other things, we heard that people discovering (or rediscovering) Tumblr really struggle to understand how to make it work for them. They sometimes don’t know how to follow the right blogs to curate their dashboard, or how to use likes, replies and reblogs to interact with a particular fandom.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, really! Some might be lucky and have friends to teach them, but many come here to find friends in the first place, and leave feeling lost and overwhelmed.
So here at Labs we’re working on ideas to help people discover what makes Tumblr a unique corner of the internet, making it easier for them to find belonging here.
Our (failed) idea
Our first idea was to simplify certain parts of our interface, thinking through each element and putting what is important to you front and center. We called it “Mini"—mostly because it was a cute name.
We started work on the post interface first, because that’s the most important part of your experience on Tumblr, and we wanted to improve some of the problems there.
Our goal was to make labels and actions on posts easier to differentiate, and make each post the same height, so diving into a long post is a choice. To achieve that, we designed a new header, a new footer with separate actions, and a mini version of the post:
As we started to build it, we realized that scrolling through the dashboard after the changes… didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel like Tumblr anymore. But we didn’t want to make a decision based solely on our own gut feelings… we needed to ask the Tumblr community.
An essential part of how we’re working in Labs is speaking to people who use Tumblr (and those who don’t use it, but could love it) pretty much on a daily basis. So we showed them this idea, and their response was indifferent at best, and confused at worst.
We learned that it’s hard to limit the height of a post without sacrificing the magic of reblogs, and that loss was too meaningful for us to pursue this any further. So we’re putting it in the trash.
What’s next
So Mini didn’t work out! That’s okay. We’ve learned a lot. While minifying posts might not be the answer, there were parts of the idea that worked, and you might even start to see some improvements being tested from what we learned. We’ll see where that goes!
We’re working on other ideas at the same time, and some of them are getting a lot of love from people in research. So the next time you hear from us, we’ll hopefully have something more successful to share—stay tuned!
one of the best parts of working at this place is scrolling throughout the day to test and just finding all the cool stuff people bother to share on this little website
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Tumblr is not getting rid of the chronological Dashboard!
Folks keep sending this feedback in, I’ve replied to 108 in the last hour, so I figured I’d write a post. Please reblog this, thank you!
Rest assured, [tumblr] is not getting rid of the chronological feed of blogs you follow. For details, please see this update from Staff over a week ago.
We also mentioned this on Changes the day after. Please do follow @changes, it only posts twice a week and is the best way to stay informed. (BTW, a lot of you are blocking Changes, WTF is up with that?)
As for algorithms, we actually have several already in use, and those are the ones we’re working to improve. You can see them under the For You tab, and turn them on or off for your Dashboard via the “Include posts liked by the blogs you follow,” “Best stuff first,” and “Based on your likes” toggles in your Dashboard settings.
With those three toggled off, which will always be an option, your Dashboard feed will be solely posts from the blogs you follow sorted chronologically from newest to oldest.
If you have any other feedback, please use the Feedback category in the support form. Submitting feedback there is like a firehose directly to our developers and designers. (Please of course be mindful of signal to noise. I know a firehose is tempting to abuse, but the more nonconstructive feedback we get, the harder it is to see the constructive feedback.)
And, of course, please stop sending concerns about removing the chronological feed. We are not removing the chronological feed of blogs you follow, we never will, and we never planned to.
What are the biggest things that we are missing or broken in Tumblr search? Feel free to share your pain points or ideas on how to make Tumblr search the best.
Please also specify whether this is for a global search, tag search / community hub, or search within a blog.
