This article misses (intentionally?) the 3rd important point that keeps me on there: the absence of big money. There's minimal advertising, no astroturfing, no sponsorships, no paid features. It is pretty much the last of its kind in that regard.
Someone is clearly making a push to capitalize on it, and I'm not looking forward to adding it to the endlessly growing list of beautiful things that rich businessmen have destroyed.
Are.na, although very niche (which I think is a feature), looks very interesting in this regard. Financed trough paid accounts instead of selling user data/ads and being driven by chasing big investor money. It also seems to have a very open api for people to build things upon.
Are.na is an online social networking community and creative research platform [...] Are.na was built as a successor to hypertext projects like Ted Nelson's Xanadu, and as an ad-free alternative to social networks like Facebook, forgoing "likes," "favorites," or "shares" in its design. Are.na allows users to compile uploaded and web-clipped "blocks" into different "channels," [...]
If I could make one change to Facebook, it would be to eliminate the share button. I wouldn't make it impossible for people to copy and paste links to third-party content, but there would be no front-and-center UI for it.
The main thing I want from that sort of social media is to see original content from people that I know. I don't want to see the best cat video; I want to see my friend's cat video.
Which I think is great. Those features just incentivises people to constantly scream for attention and marketing agencies to try to create viral campaigns.
There are already plenty products aimed at the mass populace, I would love to see again more communities built for the niches. Not just in terms of topics (subreddits et al), but functionality and interactions. Because honestly I came to the conclusion that communities only work if they stay relatively small and focused. I haven't used Are.na enough to say anything about their community specifically, but their approach resonates strongly with me.
> I have a feeling that is going to alienate mass populace users.
Sounds like a key feature.
I think we've learned by now that mass adoption is the death signal for any platform since it will bring in the spammers, advertisers and other undesirables which ruin the experience.
I don't like the homepage much, especially since I did absolutely not understand what this is supposed to be about.
The application part itself I quite like. Some of the color contrasts are way to low and style over substance (my first impression was, that it must have been designed by a Swiss Architect), but what I do like a lot is, just how little noise there is.
They cite someone saying "There aren’t influencers on Tumblr the way there are on Instagram and TikTok, and the experience for all users might be more pleasant as a result. " they just don't dig further into it.
Agree. I like it as a quiet place to jot down my thoughts. I don't post often; when I do, it's easy to remember how to get it to do what I want, I've never been hassled. I could do this on my private server(s), and if tumblr gets weird, that's always an option.
But isn't Tumblr userbase mainly teens and their subcultures? What's the value of not having ads, sponsor and astroturfing, if there's not relevant or interesting community to join to begin with?
“All tumblr users are either too young for tumblr or too old for tumblr” - “tumblr teen” argumate (argumate is certainly not a teenager (I think he is probably like, almost 40?) but some news article referred to him as such at one point)
I wouldn’t say there’s nothing interesting on tumblr.
Like, there’s nostalgebraist’s writing on machine learning,
Also other people posting some math content.
It is a social blogging site. People write blogs there.
Just because a platform is not relevant or interesting to you or your circles doesn’t mean it has no value to others. Lots of people got a lot of value out of using Tumblr. When Facebook was limited to people you know in real life, Tumblr allowed for anonymity and making friends with people with similar experiences.
Someone is clearly making a push to capitalize on it, and I'm not looking forward to adding it to the endlessly growing list of beautiful things that rich businessmen have destroyed.