I am Douglas Tarlow

So a lot of people have already weighed in on Tumblarity, and I’m going to take a moment to do the same.

My first impression was: “wow, awesome”, I really liked visualizing some of the information about my usage of tumblr, and a composite score, ok, thats fine.

That wore off rather quickly. This last weekend, I tumbl’d quite a bit on Saturday, then was busy the entire day Sunday up until this point. My tumblarity went from 1050 to 530 (right now). Thats rediculous.

Listen, Tumblarity is a great idea for tumblr, its meant to encourage people to post more and use the service more, its a stickiness factor. But, stickiness at the cost of user exerience is a huge trade-off, one that I personally would not make in this manner. As a pretty avid tumblr user, I was disconcerted to see a 500 point drop in the course of about 30 hours. It changed the way I felt about tumblr and tumblarity.

So, dear tumblr, you had a good idea, but you’re execution is sub-par, it makes me enjoy the service less, and having discussed this with other users like @ninakix, I believe that I’m not the only one who feels this way. Is encouraging more posts really worth losing the trust of your most valuable users (assuming I’m not the only one who has mixed feelings about tumblarity)? Because the new updates make me feel obligated to post post post, its like the seatbelt alarm in a car, except in this case, theres no reason for it, so its an un-needed annoyance. I don’t want to be forced into using tumblr, thats not why I’m here, and honestly, if it gets much worse I’ll probably leave. I hope you will think about tumblarity’s real effect on the tumblr community. I’ve decided to boycott tumblr for a week, maybe more, to show my disapproval for this feature. If you want to see what I would normally post, head over to my twitter. Thanks.

And to my followers, if you agree with this post, please like or reblog it. If you don’t like it, then you can email me doug.tarlow+tumblr@gmail.com