Tumblr’s New ‘Like’ Feature Lacks Personal Utility
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 to whom it 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.
Yep.
interesting dialogue on grappling w/ a feature
