Tumblr seems to be in an odd spot these days. I don’t really understand what its plan or target market is.
It was originally famous for hosting a large amount of erotic imagery. That was a business model that pushed their worth over 1 billion dollars. Then there was the purge of adult content which predictably destroyed their user base and left them a cultural irrelevance. Now a lot of porn seems to have sneaked back but it doesn’t seem welcome and sites get randomly blown up. Some will post erotic content for years without issue. Others, with similar content, are wiped after a few weeks.
Are they actually trying to block porn and just really suck at it? Or are they trying to use it to attract users and just randomly blowing sites up to maintain the fiction they don’t want it? Or do they tolerate it until the bandwidth of a particular site becomes too high? It’s really hard to fathom their plan.
This image is from the purebeautyandstyle tumblr – last updated 10 years ago!
They’re in panic to be expelled from the App Stores but the way they try to relieve the pressure is just ridiculous and as bad as the user interface. I don’t get it how such a big thing can be managed so badly.
Oh, interesting. That’s a good thought. They’re trying to thread the needle by banning enough to keep them in the app stores, but not so much as to drive a lot of users away. It is amazing how they’ve managed to keep going but at the same time be so random and badly managed.
-paltego
Right, that’s the point.
Does Tumblr really feature anything except gently erotic-oriented content? I use that term instead of ‘porn’ because it well reflects what I am looking for: images of attractive ladies in elegant or skimpy costumes, as opposed to ‘porn’ as such?
What else is Tumblr for? I used to have occasional dealings with social media marketing people at my old job and I don’t recall there ever being a suggestion that we should promulgate our work on Tumblr. If there had been, I don’t think I’d have suggested boosting it on ‘my network’.
OK, some Tumblrs do seem to feature photos of cups of coffee, or cars and suchlike, as well as pretty ladies, but I can’t see a successful business model based on that.
I’m not complaining. “Sexy but not explicitly pornographic” is basically precisely what I am looking for, for images to despoil with captions on my own blog, so I think Tumblr’s perfect just as it is.
Best wishes
S
There’s definitely a lot of explicit porn still on tumblr if you’ve a mind to look for it. At least so I’m reliably assured by other people who are definitely not me. The more gentle erotic content is thankfully still prevalent, and seems to get wiped less often, although it’s not immune. I’ve seen some very PG-13 sites vanish for reasons that baffle me. I’m definitely with you on the benefits of elegant attire over naked sweaty bits.
It felt like there was a brief moment where tumblr played a part in the cultural zeitgeist. A possibility of it being another instagram. Or at least one of those semi-successful 2nd tier companies like snap or pinterest. Just a shame Yahoo managed to destroy whatever credibility it did have.
Thanks for stopping by!
-paltego