I used to have a blog atTumblr. I got annoyed with it’s shortcomings, and walked away. I then tried WordPress. I got annoyed with it’s shortcomings, and walked away. I then triedPosterous. I got annoyed with it’s shortcomings, and walked away.
Starting to see a pattern here?
It occurred to me this weekend that I had been thinking about each of these online publishing platforms in terms of bending them to suit my requirements, rather than using them as they were intended.
Tumblr isnota blogging platform, and it’snota social network. It’s pretty bad at both things. If you want to write, you go toBlogger- I have, and it rules for that. If you want to connect with friends, you head toFacebook, orGoogle Plus- they both rule at that too. If you want to make pronouncements from a soapbox in the middle of the street, you can (or if you don’t fancy braving the elements, skinheads and stares of strangers, you can tryTwitter).
I read an interesting article about the growing pains of Tumblr in next month’s Wired magazine (why do magazines do that? It’s the 13th Feb at the time of writing, and I have next month’s magazine in my hands). The article talked about David Karp never intending Tumblr to be a blogging platform - if anything it was a reaction for people who couldn’t, or were not interested in writing. It got me thinking about the content, versus the platform again.
I guess half my problem is that I’m a software and web developer. I understand exactly how to build any of the web publishing platforms - I’ve built my own in the past. I also know alotabout HTML, and semantic markup. The output of WYSIWYG web authoring tools horrifies me - the generated mark-up is oftenunintelligiblegarbage that only it’s mother (the rich text editor) could understand, or love. Divorcing myself from the nuts and bolts of the system and just concentrating on the content is therefore difficult for me.
Alotof people followed my adventures on Tumblr. I’m therefore wondering about returning, but on the platform’s terms. I won’t be using it as a blog, and I won’t be using it as a social network. I will be using it as a scrapbook - because that’s all it’s really capable of being. It was never designed to be anything else.
There’s also the question of the 500ish people (and counting) who have begun usingthe themeI built for Tumblr. They need somewhere to find me, and finding a “Goodbye” post perhaps isn’t the most endearing discovery should they seek me out.
There was a moment this afternoon when I took a photo, and wished I had somewhere to share it. The photo was never going to become part of a blog post - just a captured moment worth sharing. Perhaps Tumblr can be a platform for those moments.