Michele Catalano had mostly positive
memories of
Tumblr. When she joined the platform in 2009, two years after it
started, it was a fledgling microblogging site with a friendly feel, she said,
and a sense of community.
اضافة اعلان
“I made so many friends,” Catalano said. “Everybody
got along. It was creative. We saw couples get together and get married.” Like
many users, though, over time she found herself migrating to Twitter,
eventually leaving Tumblr altogether a few years ago. After billionaire Elon
Musk completed his purchase of Twitter in October, Catalano, 60, decided to
rejoin her old standby.
The welcome back was not warm.
“I made like two posts, and then I checked my
dashboard and kept seeing posts about how Twitter people were coming, and it’s
going to ruin the community,” she said. “It was hostile. I was like, I don’t
need this vibe at all.”
With the future of Twitter uncertain, some users
have begun to seek out new platforms like Mastodon, a decentralized,
open-source networking service, or returned to stalwarts like Instagram with
renewed enthusiasm. Tumblr, which is now owned by Automattic, has also seized
the opportunity to court new users, posting a Twitter thread this month with a
list of “reasons to join Tumblr”. Recently, the platform gained at least one
high-profile defector when actor
Ryan Reynolds announced he would be leaving
Twitter for Tumblr.
Tumblr does appear to be seeing an uptick in new
users. In a tweet, the company’s CEO, Matt Mullenweg, reported a 58 percent
increase in Tumblr’s iOS app downloads and a 57 percent increase for Android
users in the first week of November. And Tumblr users say they are seeing
long-quiet blogs reactivating after years of dormancy or new ones popping up.
Automattic declined to comment on Tumblr’s user
numbers beyond pointing The New York Times to Mullenweg’s tweets.
Some Tumblr veterans are treating the potential mass
migration as a threat. After Reynolds’ announcement, Tumblr was flooded with
hashtags like #TwitterExodus and #TwitterApocalypse. Some longtime users made
viral posts educating new users about the norms on the site, including tips on
how to curate the Tumblr “dashboard,” or feed, for example. But others were
more apprehensive, cautioning others about what could happen to the community
if unwelcome brands, celebrities, and other Twitter refugees encroached.
Dana Reback, a market researcher in
Los Angeles who
has been an active Tumblr user since around 2011, said there was some concern
among Tumblr veterans that new users would bring back some of the infighting
and upheaval that users experienced during earlier iterations of the platform,
particularly before the site banned adult content in 2017 and prompted its own
mass exodus.
It’s hard to be an ‘influencer’ on Tumblr because you do not have access to the information that would make you seem like a big deal
“There were arguments all the time,” said Reback,
30. Now, though, “a lot of that culture seems to have moved to Twitter,” she
said.
Still, Reback, who primarily uses her Tumblr account
to publish fan fiction, says she and others on the platform are welcoming of
incoming Twitter users — provided they understand that they are on already
established territory. Tumblr users have developed their own lexicon and
etiquette — hashtags, for instance, play a bigger role on Tumblr than they do
on Twitter. There is no public follower count, and reblogs (similar to
retweets) are essential to boosting visibility and supporting other creators on
the platform. “Likes,” one user cautioned, can function more as bookmarks than
endorsements.
“Coming in and observing the space and not trying to
make it like the place that you’ve left, but appreciating it for the place that
it is, is always valuable when you’re migrating somewhere,” she said.
Reback and others noted that Tumblr users seemed
most wary about the influx of big-name users like Reynolds, who might make the
platform feel more corporate and less comfortable for the fandoms that populate
it. (Although fantasy writer Neil Gaiman is a longtime Tumblr darling.)
But they are not sure there is reason to be worried
yet. The differences between Tumblr and Twitter may prevent the former from
serving as a true replacement for the latter. Twitter has long been a platform
where celebrities, brands, journalists, and other public-facing entities
thrive. Tumblr, with its aforementioned lack of follower count, typically
anonymous user base, and focus on the collective user experience over
individual success, is not the kind of place that amplifies personalities. That
is a large part of Tumblr’s appeal for many.
“There’s a motto on Tumblr that brands and
celebrities and whatnot, they just don’t do well on platforms like Tumblr,”
said Kristen Lee, 30, an illustrator and webcomic artist who publishes work on
Tumblr. “It’s hard to be an ‘influencer’ on Tumblr because you do not have
access to the information that would make you seem like a big deal. That is a
thing that does not translate as well as on Instagram or TikTok.”
Still, even non-celebrities might find Tumblr’s
setup too distinct from Twitter to serve as a successor. Leah Marilla Thomas,
34, a freelance entertainment journalist and an anonymous Tumblr user since
2009, recently created a public-facing account on the platform to share her
work in anticipation of Twitter’s demise. “It’s not super conducive to sharing
articles, which is what I think a lot of people I know would be migrating to
do,” she said.
If this is the end for Twitter, Catalano says she
probably will not try out Tumblr again. “If Twitter collapses, I’m free,” she
said. “If this is the opportunity that comes to me to back away from social
media, that’s what I’m going to do.”
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