I love Tumblr, it's a website i've been using for sometime now. I'm sure i've already mentioned it countless times before, but it's an already well-established new (well, to an extent) blogging platform, allowing you to post whatever kind of media you want such as photos, text, music or videos with relatively little hassle. It is, for lack of a better word, fun- instantaneous and random postings of whatever you feel like. Again, for lack of a better description, a scrapbook of sorts.
It's because of this i've been using the service/had a tumblr of my own for sometime now, and is invariably the reason why I don't post here often, or as much as i'd like to. Often by time I feel as if i've got something to genuinely post it's been spilled elsewhere, be it Tumblr, Twitter, or even Flickr -this is something I seriously need to work out at some point...just not today. Anyway, what makes Tumblr so fun, enjoyable and perhaps even addictive is that ease of use, the carefree nature of it, and just the pure expressionism of it all. I'd like to think some of the best websites out there are indeed Tumblr-built or based off the same kind of concept.
Whatever their appeal though or raison d'être, it's something that's currently undergoing a very significant change. A few weeks ago the site rolled out a new feature called Tumblarity, a new development "where you can see cumulative and trending stats about your activity on Tumblr", in addition to "[your Tumblarity being] derived from every blog’s activity and popularity across our network".
Both additions sound interesting on paper, and thanks to a new tagging directory, you can check with ease the most popular or wide reaching tumble logs within a specific area, such as photography or music, something you've always been able to do previously as part of the site's "Staff Picks". The problem that arises from these new additions however is the fact every user and their tumblr page now has a number. Twelve, six, two-hundred and three, this is is your "score" or Tumblarity within the community. It's a ranking, similar to that of Technorati's previously, but it turns the Tumblr community and audience from a collection of interestingly unique users into a massive cloud of repost and republishing- Tumblr is one giant leaderboard.


You can increase your Tumblarity (and thus, rise higher to the top) in several ways, by posting more new content, watching/following other users, and most interestingly, rebloging the content of others. The latter is an idea that has existed from the platform's beginnings- if you like something, you heart it or post it, that's just the way things have always worked. In applying a points system for doing so, Tumblr is no longer a playground of individual expression, but one big repost machine, where no one is unique, and everyone has the same posts as each other.
This is all exaggeration on my part, but a problem that has already begun as users seek to gain points and a higher number by mindlessly copying the content of others. It's all one big popularity contest where the prize is...well, a bigger number, and not satisfaction or general feel-good sharing as may have been the case in the past.
I love Tumblr, and it's a service and platform I hope to continue to use over the next few months/years. Like here and the brain-fart central that is my Twitter, it's an outlet of my inner workings, the things I like and self expression- a catch all of all the positives of blogging but quicker. The Tumblr number game may be there, and more than likely will be there for years to come, but it is not a game I will be playing, at least willingly. Currently I am twelve and ranked #46,886. I post both this figure and the fact that I have a number, regrettably.