What did Tumblr have that Twitter doesn’t?

[akitsukino]

Something I was thinking about. Of course Tumblr is still around but after 2018 a lot of people bailed to Twitter because they couldn’t post the way they used to or they just left on principal. I never really used Twitter before but I ended up moving there to follow some of my favorite artists and I saw how different it was.

I suppose on the surface Twitter and Tumblr are similar. They’re both blogging sites with scrolling timelines where you can post your content and reblog others content and you can curate a timeline that brings in other kinds of posts you may like. The two main differences I’ve noticed feel like this:

1) Things in Twitter seem to move faster. Comparing posts with a 280 character limit to longer involved blogposts, scrolling and browsing feels more involved on Tumblr. One thing I’ve heard from a lot of artists is that they feel like it’s harder to archive on Twitter because things come and go so fast.

2) Things on Twitter seem to be more open. Here’s the thing; I kept HEARING that Tumblr was some kind of mosh pit of anger, drama, and politics, but the truth is I never saw some of that stuff happening at first? I usually only saw the aftermath of it when artists and other circles would bring things into the light. But on Twitter it feels like I can see some of the worst harassment happening to people in real time at an accelerated rate. There have even been web designers who say that Twitter’s UI is almost designed to encourage fighting. I can’t put my finger on it but there was something that felt more, private/ closed off about Tumblr. And considering some of the GENUINELY WRETCHED stuff I’ve heard people find on Tumblr it’s hard to say how good/ bad that was.

Of course Tumblr is still around and lots of artists still blog there ( lots of people say it’s quieter now), but I just think it’s interesting how platforms and audiences change for artists of over the years. Livejournal, Deviantart, now Twitter. It’s fascinating to think what’ll happen next. So what do some of you think. What do you think? What do you think one platform has / had that the other didn’t? Do you prefer one to the other? Let me know below!

[GesuGesu]

What I liked about Tumblr was the ability to have a custom CSS on your own tumblr page, so you could have an archive, and people can search your posts by tags.

Twitter tags are site-wide and not limited to your own without a VERY personal hashtag. You also can't customize your own profile very much. There's a limit to your twitter profile by character count.

2) Things on Twitter seem to be more open. Here’s the thing; I kept HEARING that Tumblr was some kind of mosh pit of anger, drama, and politics, but the truth is I never saw some of that stuff happening at first? I usually only saw the aftermath of it when artists and other circles would bring things into the light. But on Twitter it feels like I can see some of the worst harassment happening to people in real time at an accelerated rate. There have even been web designers who say that Twitter’s UI is almost designed to encourage fighting. I can’t put my finger on it but there was something that felt more, private/ closed off about Tumblr. And considering some of the GENUINELY WRETCHED stuff I’ve heard people find on Tumblr it’s hard to say how good/ bad that was.

In terms of toxicity and drama I feel like there's way more on Twitter because I agree that the short tweet format helps drive misunderstandings and arguments. Tumblr definitely had a cesspool but it was fairly hidden from me as I didn't go into that corner of Tumblr.

I prefer Twitter at the moment since I had both Twitter and Tumblr around 2012 but Twitter is easier for me to contact and chat to people while Tumblr felt like a lonely blogging service for me and I didn't really make connections or friends via Tumblr.

[Kelheor]

One feature I hate Twitter most for is inability to edit anything after you pressed "Send". I hate this with burning passion and that's one of the reasons I don't use it often. You can't unsend or rewrite a private message, you can't change anything you wrote and it stresses me out deeply. From this comes the next point - Tumblr felt like I am intruding people's lives less. When using Twitter I often feel like I knock into someone's window to say them something in the face, with Tumblr it felt more like sending a letter.

Also I do actually really miss longass posts of Tumblr. You know, when someone wrote a huge thing and others reply with the same long texts. I learned a good deal of things from them and they were really fun to read.
And yeah, archive is a really really great option, especially since you can choose to look through it however you want - by the date or type of post of the hashtag. I lost my Tumblr verification some time ago, but I can still look through the archive and it's a pure blessing.

[HGohwell]

I wouldn't even call twitter a blogging site to be honest. The limit on words means you can't really do what I'd consider blogging and basically makes it impossible to have any kind of discussion (not that it stops people trying and failing) with nuisance, since it's hard to fit nuisance into 200-odd characters. (Up to that point alone was over 300.) Tumblr allowed you to do more traditional blogging: title, basically unlimited word count, read mores and a decent tagging system both site wide and within your own blog. The tagging was also separate to your word count so didn't eat into that. Tumblr was generally slower (depending on how many people you followed) because posts were bigger.

For artists specifically, the tagging thing above, but also until recently, twitter cut your art in really awkward ways, while tumblr allowed it all to be seen, even if it was resized for the preview. And you could move you 10 pieces of art (to twitter's 4) within the post to try and line them up nicely. or just have them all full sized one after the other.

Tumblr drama tended to stay within it's own communities. Like, if one specific fandom had an issue, it stayed within that fandom unless something massively dramatic happened. More like if there's a school drama, it stays within that school, but the entire school knows and there's little you can do to escape and it's a very shared environment. While twitter, it's more common to see dog piling from a wider range of people, outside of your specific little group, and the brevity of the tweets makes it very hard to formulate a decent defence everyone will see.

[NickRowler]

I think an advantage Tumblr has is that it is an actual blogging site. It has tools available that gives people the ability to write blog posts with long paragraphs, a lot of photos, a clear breakdown of links, and a post archive area. Twitter has been called a “microblog” because even tho you can give daily updates, it lacks traditional blog site features.

When it comes to community, I think an advantage but also a disadvantage of Twitter is that almost everyone uses it. You may get more eyeballs but you might also get some weird political extremists old enough to be your mom or grandmother harassing you on your timeline. Or some celebrity from a favorite film from when you were 8 now ranting out racist stuff.

I am not saying Tumblr communicate is perfect. I feel if you find a decent fandom, it ends up being OK. However, I feel like there has been issues with some people on there obsessed with making everyone miserable and sort of encouraging teenagers on the site that that type of behavior is how people should act.

[Moesakuara]

Agreed. It was like a lot of tiny universes in one place. I made posts about my comic up here (at the time it was going to be a podcast) and I would still get messages every so often about voice acting years after the project had closed. Time and the flow of information was different there. And as some other people have said it was super easy to customize your page. I have never used a website builder that was that customizable and easy to work with before or since. I had music, pixel art as my background, animated cursors... it really felt like your own digital space. I also think as an artist, specifically a fan artist, it was a nice space to be in if you where mid-tier. I was able to gain thousands of followers with really no work... just using the site, having fun and posting my art. Places like instagram make it an uphill battle where money is the goal. I have a twitter but am nervous to use it because of how combative it seems. I wouldn't be surprised if it was designed to cause arguments.

Of course this all changed when Yahoo bought tumblr. Ads everywhere, bots, slow service and random changes that made no sense. It definitely felt like the "old" mid two thousands internet and that sort of vanished before 2018. I feel Twitter is very much part of the "new" internet generation.

[BobbyjoeX]

only thing i remember about Tumblr is it was easier to get along with people in specific fandoms.

It was also a place i felt comfortable enough to post NSFW art. with Twitter, a lot of NSFW twitter users get a lot of nasty replies cause Twitter recommends them to anyone and everyone. and that terrifies me QwQ

[MeltingCORE]

I still use Tumblr and have a pretty decent following there ngl. But I've been on the site forever too. The one thing I like about Tumblr that Twitter doesn't have is content that interests me. Twitter houses thousands of great artists yeah, but where's my obscure content? I want to post about moths, 00s visual novels, Trance music, old J-fashion, etc. It's fun to search for that content on Tumblr where on Twitter, most of what I want is virtually non-existent. Twitter is basically just a social chat service that you can post art on. Tumblr is more like an inspiration pinboard of neat photos/art. (To me, anyways!)

[Llyrel]

Lots of good points here already! I've been on Tumblr for a very long time and I'm slowly trying to get back into Twitter, but yeah, I feel like the two platforms are very different. Some of my favorite things Tumblr had that Twitter hasn't would be:

• Long posts. Could never get into that whole Twitter character limit.
• Blog customization. Loved being able to customize my own CSS and adding pages.
• Possibility to edit your posts. I agree with @Kelheor here, not being able to edit my posts on Twitter is a HUGE source of stress.
• Finding people in your niche would be easier: the algorithm seems to be better at picking people who have similar interests as yours, rather than just throwing at you a bunch of unrelated names just because... apparently, they're mutuals with your followers? °°
• Not having to deal with "liked" posts from people I followed. I think this is also a big source of drama on Twitter: the site keeps throwing at you stuff you don't want to see, just because one of your followers liked it. To get rid of it, you need to either tell the site multiple times that you don't want to see such posts (but at that point it's already too late and your day has been ruined) OR you have to mute everyone who likes content you don't want to see. On Tumblr, liked posts were WAY more private and could even be hidden altogether from other users.
• Finding content was easier. Each fandom had self-regulated tags that you could browse to find what you liked. On Twitter, there doesn't seem to be such a thing.
• Possibility to filter the great majority of hate and drama by simply blocking anon asks. Most Tumblr users suddenly lack the courage to send you hate if their name is going to be attached to their posts, so disallowing anon asks was one of the easiest way to stay out of drama. (Too bad that the great majority of Tumblr users didn't seem to understand that... )

On the other hand, though, I think Twitter has a couple of good things that Tumblr doesn't have. Namely:

• Muting. Oh gawd, how I wish there was muting on Tumblr XD
• Private accounts can still be seen by followers. AS IT SHOULD BE. What even IS the point of having a private blog that can only be seen by its author, Tumblr?!
• Less censorship, apparently? °°

Either way, I think BOTH sites are actually terrible when it comes to dealing with drama and cyberbullying. Tumblr makes it impossible to delete a post once it's been reblogged, so if something blows up in the wrong way, it will haunt you FOREVER, even after you delete your blog (I see fake news that were debunked over 5 years ago STILL getting hundreds of reblogs, ffs). Anon questions on Tumblr can only be answered in public, so you can only choose between ignoring anon hate or publishing it for everyone else to see. There's just no way to settle things in private. Both sites have ridiculous character limitations when it comes to the comment section, which makes it impossible to go more in-depth and explain yourself better when making a point. Also, being unable to control WHO can reblog your posts makes it easy for just about ANYONE to jump into the conversation (whether it is about them or not) and further blow things out of proportion. Blocking is stupid on both sites (Twitter TELLS YOU that you've been blocked, while on Tumblr you can just log out and send anon hate if the blog allows it) and the staff won't do anything about cyberbullying on any site: on Twitter, it takes them MONTHS to act, while on Tumblr, the general stance of the staff is basically "just sort things out yourselves".

[sushy00]

Tumblr is the best. And I also like that the older users of Tumblr name it the forsaken hell site.
And still don't leave (me as well xD)

[VibrantFox]

horse plinko

seriously tho i feel like twitter is 90% random arguments that you'll never really get the full context of unless your diving into everything at once (which why would you do that seriously spare yourself)

meanwhile tumblr is circles talking about their favorite characters/ocs/media/interests with a spot of drama here and there but it's usually contained to whatever corner it's happening in rather than seeping out and being shoved into the face of anyone even loosely related to a single individual in said situation on twitter

[jurinova]

People have already mentioned many of the things I enjoy about Tumblr, so I'll try not to repeat them.

Definitely though, one of the best things about Tumblr is how easy it is to control the content I see on my dashboard. I can just follow blogs that post things I enjoy, like for example architecture or art blogs, and chances are I never see any drama happening. I can be completely happy in my little corner reblogging Eurovision and Moomin memes. However in Twitter this is basically impossible. Every day there is new drama and every day they all seem to want to get involved somehow. It's feels like watching a shouting contest and to be honest, it is very exhausting. Not to mention that Twitter really is about personal posting and very rarely about anything else. Tumblr has people creating blogs dedicated to very specific topics and I really like that.

A lot of artists moved from Tumblr to Twitter and I followed them there, too. But what I got instead of art was so much pointless chattering. I find it really frustrating that I'd just like to see their cool art but my dashboard is filled with so much stuff I have zero interest in. It's way more drama I ever saw in Tumblr. Worst part is it isn't even funny drama, which is something I at least could enjoy.

I've really tried to get the hang of Twitter but I think it requires a specific type of person to thrive there and I'm not it. It's too fast and there's too much happening for me. I know Tumblr has a lot less users these days but I hope it survives because at this point it's one of the only places online I actually enjoy. Especially thanks to all the very silly memes.

[system]

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.