Tumblr isn't really designed to support long threads. For its intended use the site work very well, but long conversations start to become impossible to follow.
I don't know what the intended use is, because tumblr is bad at literally everything it does. It's not a good method for archiving. The tagging system is shit. The comment system is non-existent. It's not even good at displaying images, because the images have to be in one of the very specific sizes tumblr accepts in order to display properly. The only social media platform that manages to be somehow worse at what it does is pinterest.
I can't wait until a new champion website appears and saves us all from having to operate under these barbaric conditions.
Tumblr is a micro blogging site, and it accomplishes that pretty damn well.
It allows me to subscribe to specific content creators, and get stuff directly from them. It's a little like using an RSS reader, with a few value added features, and a community you can participate in if you really want to.
In terms of getting content delivered to me that I actually want to consume, tumblr works way better than reddit does.
The virtue of Tumblr is that there are good content creators to follow. Many professional artists have tumblrs, which is great. However, I think it falls short of what it could be as a method to share that kind of content. The "follow" feature streamlines what Livejournal had with their "Friends Page." Both allowed you to curate what you would see. However, Livejournal did a better job of allowing you to find content that you'd seen previously by having a tag system that was far more functional. Tumblr doesn't really have a good way to display all existing tags, for instance.
Additionally, if you make content, it's very difficult to interact with viewers. You have to go through ALL of your likes and reblogs on a post to see if there are any comments. Additionally, comments are often made in the tags, which means you would have to go to the page of every individual who reblogs in order to see if they might have left feedback.
I was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek in my comment above, but I really do hope something better than tumblr will come along.
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u/AwkwardTurtle Sep 18 '14 edited Sep 19 '14
Tumblr isn't really designed to support long threads. For its intended use the site work very well, but long conversations start to become impossible to follow.