This is a little more Tumblr advocacy than usual, even for me, but theinformation posted a feature wishlist that I completely disagree with. So I had to respond. I’ve been using Tumblr for over a year now also, and I think this person completely misses the point of Tumblr.
A built-in comment system: Yes, Disqus works, but a comment engine made by Tumblr would better integrate with our usernames and such. Also, it would probably be less cumbersome to deal with.
If you actually think about how this might work, they would literally be re-making Disqus. What’s the point? That would just be taking away from all the other features they could have been working on. Alternatively, they could do some kind of Dashboard-only comments, but that would discourage reblogs and turn into yet another FriendFeed wannabe.
What they should really do is integrate more tightly with Disqus. Maybe you could enter your Disqus account into your prefs, kind of like the way it is with Twitter, and do something special with that.
There should also be official themes — i.e. ones that you don’t have to touch the HTML — with Disqus support, making it easier for people who just want it to work. Tumblr is the sweet-spot between regular blogging and microblogging. I moved my regular blog to Tumblr, and I know some people who use it as their only Twitter client b/c it allows richer input. I know parents who use Tumblr to share photos of their kids with the grandparents. Still others use it solely for music.
With the proper theme customization, Tumblr can bend to either end of the blogging spectrum, and even in completely different directions. Right now, though, you have to be a techie geek to do that. The theme garden is great, but until there are some really sweet defaults that cater to the different uses of Tumblr — and explain to people that they do — newcomers will find an alternative b/c it’s not dead-simple.
Adding a “dislike” button: Reddit has its downvote and Digg has a ‘thumbs down’, so why shouldn’t we have a “dislike” button to accompany the “like” button?
Are you kidding? Tumblr isn’t a social-news site. I’m truly disgusted by even the thought that you would give this kind of feedback to the people posting. The reason we post to our own tumblelog is because… well, we own it. And we can say whatever the hell we want, w/o fear of judgment from others. It’s all psychology, and this feature would totally miss the mark, discouraging the most honest, controversial posts — those which breathe life into the Internet itself.
Maybe what this guy is really asking for is a way to let Tumblr know he would rather not see posts like that. Tumblr could hide it from his Dashboard, for example, or not recommend more tumblelogs based on that. In other words, a completely private exchange of my likes and dislikes with Tumblr could be useful.
An “everyone” feed, a la Twitter: Sometimes it can be difficult to find new people to follow on here. One usually relies on reblogs and the Tumblr Radar. Why not have the normal dashboard feed and an “everyone” feed as well? Always new content.
This might be neat. That is sort of the point of the map, but it’s too heavy-weight if you don’t care about location; you have to click through to interact with anything.
User profiles: A lot of Tumblr users are on Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, and more. A profile would be a good place to contain all of this information as well as put in some personal info about yourself. I hate going to blogs where there is no info about the creator. It’s de-humanizing in a way.
At first, I didn’t really like the idea of this because it seems to add bloat. But eventually, it makes sense. It’s unfortunate there isn’t something like Disqus for profiles… Oh, yeah. Disqus already has profiles (w/ big avatars). Maybe this is another argument for tighter integration with Disqus.
Profile search tool: I would like to search for new profiles based on all sorts of criteria: Age, gender, location, favorite music/ movies. Type of blog (original content, collected photos, songs-only, etc). I think it would be invaluable to connect with new people.
… Seriously not sure what to say about this.
Private messaging: Messages would integrate into the dashboard, and instead of reblogging, we’d simply reply. Conversations could be turned into a “Chat” post at any time if both users consented.
What I hear underneath that feature request is: do what Twitter + Dashboard integration already does, but track conversations and allow me to make Chat posts out of them. That is a good idea. If both users consented?? Why would you want privacy anyway? :-P
See thumbnails of images in ‘Text’ posts: If there’s an image in a text post, it shows as a tiny picture frame in the dashboard. Why? Why not just donsize them so I don’t have to visit the actual blog?
Agreed. Besides, there’s no way to have a Photo post with a title (which is a little annoying in itself), so sometimes I end up making a private Photo post and then a Text post that embeds the photo, just to have a title.
Dashboard notifications when somebody stops following you: Self-explanatory.
Would you want notifications sent on Facebook when you removed someone as your friend? Same idea. It’s the psychology. If you knew the other person would be notified, you’d be less likely to do what you actually wanted. Eventually you’d be following a million people you didn’t really want in your Dashboard, and everything would suck.
To summarize, Tumblr is more about keeping things simple and usable than redoing what everyone else is doing just to keep up with the masses. The designer in me sees feature requests like this and gets worked-up because I know that if designers listened to their users blindly, they could ruin a great product. There are some good ideas here, but you have to listen to the needs beneath the words.
