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A review by one of the folks sums it up perfectly:
“What worries me about Yahoo! buying Tumblr is how it would choose to incorporate the website into its email and homepage features. One of the reasons why Tumblr is so unique is because it’s a niche market. By adding more users who don’t fit into this niche, it would make it more difficult for communities to develop within Tumblr, and Tumblr would have to change to accommodate these new users. Tumblr as a website is not the kind that you can sign up for in a day and be on your way. It is a website crafted so that you can immediately post but must spend several weeks, sometimes even months, to build a community. With new users who would not be willing to spend time growing a community, Tumblr would have to be changed, which would alienate its current users. Those users have spent time and effort to make Tumblr what it is today, and they are the ones who spend time on the website daily. A user who is checking onto Tumblr because it’s attached to their homepage is not going to be as strong of a user nor as dedicated. By changing the website to suit this new user, you would lose the strong users while building an undedicated usership.
To any website that would think of buying Tumblr, they must understand that it is a website that cannot be changed to make it more user friendly to a casual blogger. I think that many Tumblr users would be less worried about a buy-out if they were promised that their communities and ways of using Tumblr would not be changed. No one is going to mind Yahoo! buying the website and gaining a few extra million dollars per year from the minimal advertising; what we will be upset with is if a company like Yahoo! then changes the website to increase casual users and decrease dedicated users. Yahoo! would gain nothing by losing this “cool” group of bloggers in an age group they so desperately want to reach, so they must cater to these individuals by leaving the website exactly as is.” - houseoftombombadil
As much as is does sound like a load of bullshit for someone to buy Tumblr, it’s a possibility. I Personally think it should stay independent and I hope David Karp keeps a hold of it like his own child. Or we make enough noise to where such major changes (if bought) will not happen. I would hate to see Tumblr turned into an advertising dump.We’re not a ‘hip fad group’ to be marketed to. I hate the fact that’s all we look like to businesses in the end.reblogging again for this ^
Yahoo will do to Tumblr what Six Apart did to Livejournal
I totally agree with how advertising could be bad for Tumblr’s current users. Yahoo’s obviously expecting returns if they’re willing to pay the rumored price of over a million dollars, and unless they increase ads and tie ins with their own services such as their mail and “news” they’re going to lose money. So it seems pretty obvious that there are going to be some changes if Yahoo, or even Facebook which is also rumored to be interested in buying it out at the last minute actually does. Those could be having to log in with a Yahoo or Facebook account, or a larger amount of ads and sponsored posts. But whatever it will be, it seems like they’ll care more about profits and larger numbers of users than the already exiting users.
So that leaves us with the question of what we can do about it - here are a couple of my ideas, but feel free to add on!
- Contact them - This may seem obvious, but it’s a good place to start. I’d suggest commenting on their facebook page. Since its public they’ll probably watch it more closely than some email account, and it will get more attention.
- Get AdBlock Plus - This blocks ads and prevents the site owner from collecting revenue from ad views. More importantly, post publicly and maybe even contact Yahoo saying you’re doing it in protest of their attempt to capitalize off of Tumblr.
- Content advertisers will hate - Nobody wants to advertise on a site that publicly denounces ads, or consumerism. Or even easier than ranting on these subjects, just post a lot of porn ;) I am actually being serious, most companies won’t want to be associated with it. Tagging it with #yahoo could also make a point..
It’s such a big decision to buy out a company that I really believe if we make a big enough protest against it they might reconsider. So if you want Tumblr to stay how it is, go let them know!
(Source: my--teen--quote, via thebritishteapot)
