The Cinema Fanatic

What are these changes on Tumblr about?

On November first, this article concerning the plans of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer to make Tumblr into a YouTube competitor broke news. This new marketing strategy was the reason for Tumblr’s most recent update, which included altering the video player and image size requirements. The latter is what most bloggers are concerned about. The increase of 40 pixels in size, however small it may seem, means that all old images and gifs posted before Friday 31st October 2014 no longer fit the new image size requirements and are therefore, now stretched, blurred and cropped.

Why are Tumblr users so frustrated with the changes?

Users who have spent hours and hours creating graphics are frustrated to see their hard work go to waste. The fandom side of Tumblr arguably felt this loss of quality the most, given that those bloggers make the most use of gifs and images to share their love for audio-visual arts, but it’s important to note that the fandom side of Tumblr aren’t the only ones affected by this. Artists, photographers, and graphic designers are also heavily affected by this change. 

Since this most recent update took place, many bloggers have expressed their concern to the Tumblr staff, and have yet to receive a satisfactory response to these complaints. Many fear the possibility that Tumblr will not respond at all, unless our collective voices are raised.

Why does this concern me?

Take a second to consider the source of things you see and share online. How many memes, gifs and photographs originate from a Tumblr blog post? When you’re on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, read an article on BuzzFeed or another blog, how much of that content stems from Tumblr? A lot! With the recent changes to Tumblr, many of us don’t feel compelled to create anything new because of how the finished product will look once it is posted. Not only will that affect other social media, it will affect Tumblr and limit the content you are able to reblog. 

What’s the plan of action?

We want to spread the word about Tumblr’s ambition and express our concern on a larger scale. First and foremost, we’re hoping to get the attention of various media and other social networks (for example: BuzzFeed, which bases a lot of its articles on Tumblr fandom posts). Secondly, the people benefiting from our fandoms, meaning the cast and creators of our favourite shows. And of course, the organisations ultimately responsible for this chaos; Tumblr and Yahoo.

For this, we need your help.

I want to support this but I don’t have time and I don’t know how?

There are plenty of ways you can help, some taking very little effort:

1. Reblog this post and ask everyone you know to do the same. Without support from our fellow Tumblr users, we can’t do this. So even if this is all you can do, reblogging means so much! Send a link to any blogger you know, who can reblog this as well.

2. Support the strike Monday, November 3. You can read more about the strike in this post, made for The Walking Dead fandom. You can also read the original post, made for everyone on Tumblr. The image mentioned in the first post can be downloaded here: Imageshack, Filedropper, PostImage, or Dumpt.

It’s important to remember to log out of Tumblr completely, on November 3rd, 2014, for 24 hours, beginning at 12:00am EST.

Our aim is to lower the Tumblr’s site traffic as much as we can, which will in turn lower the amount of advertising revenue that is raised from promoted posts, etc.

We need our voices to be heard, and we can only do that with your help and commitment.

3. Make #TumblrStrike2k14 trend on Twitter. Use it whenever you post anything on Twitter on Monday, November 3. Use this page to see who you should complain to.  Contact media outlets and plead with your favorite celebrities to signal boost the #TumblrStrike2k14 hashtag and make it trend. If you’re unsure of what to say, feel free to use this template to create a Tumblr post you can link them to, or paste into an e-mail.

4. Sign this petition!

PLEASE SIGNAL BOOST THIS POST WHETHER YOU PLAN TO PARTICIPATE OR NOT.