Why Tumblr Sucks

After 40,000 followers and 4 years on Tumblr; I’ve had enough. I spent much time over the years on my multiple tumblogs hosted at Tumblr but finally the bad outweighs the good.

It brings me no pleasure to write this post. I understand as badly I think the team run Tumblr, I do not wish any harm or upset on them. I do think that their complete lack of care for their product should be known, so others do not make the same mistake I have. Frustrated with them and their service, I have finally succumbed to moving my blog to WordPress.

Why? Let me show you some of the reasons.

• This is an example of the lacklustre programming that Tumblr are known for. My friend’s private post is exposed to the world because Tumblr did not have a proper SELECT query excluding private posts. Luckily it was not too sensitive or private, but if it was and my friend had trusted Tumblr, it could have been detrimental.
• There have been countless posts that have been lost when they migrate their database. There is always an uproar due to it.
• What feels like 70% uptime. I got many complaints that people could not access my website and got the Tumblr Maintenance Page. Even Twitter never had it this bad.
• The queue system randomly works. Right now it does not work at all. This causes frustration to a lot of people who rely on it that have day jobs or other responsibilities.
• Multiple times a wrong system clock has caused the queue to misspost.
• The Question feature validation is client-side. Obviously this should be validated on the server-side. While this does not cause any issues with security, it is another example of how the code has been “hacked” together.
• 

  Multiple months after I had recommended that blog.

  Multiple times when I have recommended someone, it has not appeared for weeks. If I had actually paid for stickers (an optional extra service to show your appreciation when you recommend someone,) then I would be really angry.

• There are a lot of small issues I have missed. A post having -1 Notes is an example.

The Support

• I had arranged a Tumblr Meetup in London. I decided that I would give Tumblr 3 weeks notice for their sticker package and for them to add it to the website. I arranged it and ended up emailing a week after my initial contact as I had recieved no human response and was worrying that I would not get a reply in time.
  

  Meaghan's Response

  I got a response yet another week later…

  just posted your meetup– I updated it to the new venue (because I am awesome)

  Unfortunately she posted it 30 minutes earlier than I had asked her to and labeled it with a “16+” age limit and I still had no stickers. This was a problem for two reasons; I had to leave work 30 minutes earlier to wait for anyone who got the wrong time due to her mistake. Since it was at a bar, any 16 year olds or 17 year olds that turned up due to her incompetency would be turned down due to their being a strict 18+ age policy. Since I had already said this in the email, my annoyance was further enhanced by her “I’m awesome” comment.

  She then proceeded to update the age limit, but forgot the time. And told me that they ship them every 2 weeks and to give them more notice next time, even though I gave her over 3 weeks notice.

• 

  Absolutely no reason for that level of disrespect.

  My friend wanted access to her blog back. She had her email and name on the front of the blog. She politely asked them for access back. They rudely responded telling her it wasn’t hers.

• Another friend purchased their advertising for his blog. In the box it asked him to say which URL that he wants the advertising for. He wrote the URL and paid his money. They linked it to his personal blog and lost him potentially a lot of followers. They did not refund him for their cock-up.

Put bluntly… Tumblr sucks!

The Worst Part

The team know about this. They are too busy hanging out with famous people to care.

Terry Richardson and Tumblr Staff. One of the many people they hang out with on the company dime.

Yes, that’s Terry Richardson, the man accused of coercing models into sleeping with him and making him a “Tampon Tea” (I kid you not.) in fear of losing their job in the industry.

Tumblr is just another “fund first, monetize later” startup. They had no revenue model until last year. Considering I had been a member for 3 years by that time, that’s a long time. They take quite a slack approach to work and while that is not always bad, they seem to show a lack of real care for their product.

With all their troubles and all their bugs, you think they would put something in place to protect that. Apparently not; Marco himself even boasts that you won’t find any Factories in his codebase. Tests neither by the look of it.

Cowboy Coders

Why would I bash something I’ve been on for 4 years? Something that has meant a lot to me. It’s because the community make it, not the software. Just as our governments do not make our communities, Tumblr is not responsible for it’s community. Unfortunately, the community is the only thing it has going for it and people on the internet are fickle.

[Edit] I wrote a followup post.