Tumblr v5 Released(staff.tumblr.com) |
Tumblr v5 Released(staff.tumblr.com) |
EDIT: the rant is at http://unalone.tumblr.com/post/70951166/is-it-just-me-or-is-...
I still prefer Tumblr to Posterous. Themes are big. The user interface is big. Posterous has neither, and it suffers for it.
It's more that Tumblr's not perfect anymore. With v4, I couldn't think of anything I wanted added. It could have stayed like that for a decade and I'd still use it. It was fast, concise, beautiful, uncluttered. v5 is a step back. It adds clutter where there was none before.
I'm hoping it's temporary, because Tumblr's staff is incredible and they listen to users. (I hope more than just me complains about this.) But for now, it's pretty irritating, which is to say less than perfect. It's still the best on the market.
It's expanded to much more than a overly simple blogging interface, now it's a full fledged blog app. V5 looks amazing and the video demo does it great justice.
It pales before Charles Forman's presentation from Iminlikewithyou, though: he's part of the NY Tumblr crowd. This was easily the most over-the-top thing I've ever seen, and it's hilarious:
I can read a paragraph of text before the loading icon on yr goddamn video has even begun to spin.
But a launch should be about spectacle. It's completely fine to have fun if you're not getting in people's ways.
This is going to be an interesting year for tumble & microblogs, can't wait to see what's next :)
If so why did you choose Tumblr over creating your own; easier to create/maintain, better SEO, additional way to promote your work.... ?
I think Posterous is actually pretty good with adding features so far. Last I checked it was still dead simple. So's Tumblr, I guess, but now it FEELS more cluttered. Like it's doing more than it ought to. Even though it's still point-n-click, the page is more distracting.
The evidence that text wouldn't have been redundant is even on this thread -- poster asks what's new, is answered in a sentence. A line like that accompanying the video, or even in a separate post, would have been of unquestionable utility to users.
Or, hell, Apple software is pretty self-explanatory too. Perhaps their minimalist "bug fixes" change notes are sufficient after all?
Tumblr's video announcement wasn't the release. The release was the release. The idea's that you'll notice what's new while you're using the service. It shouldn't be a scavenger hunt. Most users don't work like that.
The video was just a fun little announcement because David and Marco like flashy things.
I'm not interested in a scavenger hunt; I just want a changelog so I can quickly see if any of my bug-bears have been fixed, without having to sit through a video that increasingly sounds vacuous and low on actual content anyway. Most users work like that.
I didn't answer for karma. I answered because somebody was curious.