#staffcon2023

Hello there!

Join us on Tumblr Live for a Q&A session with Tumblr’s CEO, @photomatt, and some special guests from across Tumblr teams.

What are the biggest things that we are missing or broken in Tumblr search? Feel free to share your pain points or ideas on how to make Tumblr search the best.

I still think collapsing reblogs so posts look more like other social media isn’t gonna work as a feature but they will probably roll them back a little and at least add a toggle off for it if they try it and enough people submit feedback. Edit: this is actually less of an issue, most of the discussion is based on a misrepresentation of what’s happening. They’re just making it easier to scroll past long posts. EDIT AGAIN: actually some people already have the initial roll out of the feature and it. Is bad.

I think submitting feedback is a takeaway. There was a pretty clear effort to just remind the user base that there are real humans on the other side of a paycheck having to read and respond to the inputs of every feedback method on the site, which is fair. It’s easy to be an asshole online in any semi anonymous platform and that is something that tumblr culture takes a certain bloodthirsty pleasure in.

And yes, of course, user complaints about issues such as accessibility and the many ongoing glitches and bots and the search function, etc. are valid and do need to be addressed. But at the very least it would be cool if we as users maybe try to cultivate a slightly less pitchforky social norm when submitting feedback about changes to the site. The ceo is not reading every @ to his blog. One of his employees is. The people reading all of the feedback are just people doing their jobs. All jobs suck under capitalism, maybe we could try not to make their jobs actively worse.

Would you be rude to an overworked server in a restaurant? No? Cool also try to not be a dick to the person getting paid to answer customer or user complaints.

Related to that, funding. Many current and former members of staff have been pretty frank about funding in the past. The company is trying to at the very least breakeven, which not a single company who has owned tumblr has managed because the hosting fees for this site are insane due to all of the stuff on it.

If they don’t get it to breakeven they’ll hopefully best case just open source the website which is a method they’ve done in the past. And it would probably work, and then the website would to my understanding be being maintained by users. Now this is where my understanding gets fuzzy so anyone with more knowledge of how this would shake out feel free to chime in. But my understanding is that the source code for the site would be opened up and maintained by the community likely through mostly volunteer work. I would guess largely uncompensated.

So personally I think maybe the vitriolic response to every change they make going forward to try and monetize the site and pay even some of the cost of operation is perhaps a bit overblown, because they’re still trying to find a way to keep paying those people to work on tumblr, and I think people continuing to be paid for the work they do is better than volunteers doing unpaid labor.

I do also think there’s a secret third option for automattic and every other company finding themselves with a worse outlook now the Silicon Valley bubble has started to really burst, and that is for all existing staff members to unionize and then turn the whole thing into a worker coop. Much more stable organizational structures. Worker coops are also one of my favorite short term solutions to many other systemic problems we are currently experiencing.

Last week, staff got together for 4 days to really dig into the issues we face as a platform here at tumblr and how we can solve them.

TL;DR is we need to grow but I think we're well equipped to do so. Everyone really does care, a lot. You could tell by the energy everyone brought and the idea's they shared. Hours, literally 9 am to 9 pm non-stop most days (and I'm sure some got started even earlier and stayed even later), were spent on brainstorming, designing, planning and just connecting so we can humanely make this place the best it can be.

They were working hard to make something out of this wonderful and weird little corner of the internet - and I'm glad and honored they let me come along for the ride.

On another sentimental, but less work related noted, I really want everyone to know how damn cool each and everyone of the staff members here is. A fun tradition that tumblr has inherited from Automattic and really embraced is flash talks - at the beginning of every day, people are given the chance to talk about whatever they want.

A quick presentation with no guard rails, just a 4 minute time box. It's a way to share something about who you, an individual, are - and a way to really embrace the bringing your whole self, every day. We got flashtalks on everything from Bigfoot, mosh pits, and roofs, to more.

Remember, keep it hardcore.