mindset. | Tumblr's New 'Like' Feature Lacks Personal Utility

07/11/08

Reblog via:

Tumblr's New 'Like' Feature Lacks Personal Utility

shutupinternet:

gregbrown:

aaronwhite:

Tumblr just rolled out the “liking” feature into my dashboard. I can “heart” any post, but why? It fails the “Delicious Lesson” (read Josh Porter’s excellent post here) The idea is that network value cannot proceed personal value. I can see how Tumblr gets value out of my ‘liking things’, perhaps this will help it determine what is ‘hot’. I can see how other authors get value out of it: they know that I liked their post. The problem is, Tumblr hasn’t closed the loop for me: *why* should I like anything (or not)? Can I search over posts I like? Nope. Is there a gallery of what I like? Not yet. Can I export them as a feed? Nope. So what does it do for me? Nothing… except…

Except it could put my tumblog in the “notes” section of everyone’s dashboard, without compromising the continuity of my blog.

A scary prediction: The “like” mechanism will become a new form of spammy self-promotion. Why wouldn’t I like everything I could to put my blog’s name in front of more people? If a wide audience was my goal, I’d be foolish not to.

I hope Tumblr can close the utility loop before this becomes a real problem.

Yeah, I really don’t like this new “like” feature, for a few other reasons:

It seems like a Digg or Reddit-ization of Tumblr, which will in turn lead to impersonal posting that tries to get to the top of the pile. Bleagh. Not only are there some pretty good arguments against this sort of incentive as a BAD THING, it also kicks Tumblr out of the personal niche that it pretty much dominates at the moment.

To whom does it accrue when someone likes a reblog? The reblogger? The original post? The question of who is SHOULD accrue is the really confusing part of this.

It turns Tumblr from something that’s at least outwardly-accessible to an inwardly-focused community, with liking trapped behind the wall of getting a tumblr account. The social network-esque admin panel features stop serving the blog-style user pages, and start becoming a sovereign entity of their own.

I think it is fucking hilarious that there are already 10 likes to this post. It’s so fucking ironic.

Anyways, I think some good points are being brought up that really don’t make any difference. Sure you might see people looking to generalize their blogs to get more likes, but there are already people that do that.

Tumblr was already a community based blog, a fact I thought made it more appealing. People that don’t use tumblr don’t get the “reblog” feature of “taking” a post, crediting it, and adding to it. This just seems like a way to reblog warthog posting on your own page.

The point of who gets credit I noticed as well, and it happened that I added stuff and someone “liked” it because of what I wrote, and credit sill appeared for the original post.

I agree there should be a way to see your “liked” posts, as well as an upcoming section of the radar for most likes (as opposed to “your music” which is totally pointless). But this doesn’t really change much for most of us. reblogging to get your name below a post was never a great way to get hits, and “liking” will be an even worse way. It really is there to make the people who post these things know their work is appreciated without having to repost.

Posts like these seem to have taken the place of Obama on my dashboard.

My main issue with this is what people have already said: there’s no place to see what posts I have “liked”. markyb’s idea for a section on the Radar would be good as well. I don’t know if I’ll bother “liking” posts (when do you think we’ll be able to stop using quotes?) as reblogging has always been an important and enjoyable part of tumblr.

As for the potential of people using this feature to spam: no. Now that everyone can “like” stuff, it’s going to be commonplace. No one will click through to your tumblr just because you liked (sorry, “liked”) something.