Notational

nedhepburn:

The whole idea of getting people to keep using a product is to make it easier to use. You’re giving the user one more thing they have to do in order to keep doing what they’ve done before. You’re putting something in their way. 

In short, Tumblr’s new money-grab is getting in the way of using their product. If they were smart they’d integrate ads into the user’s dashboard in a non-intrusive way (say, for every 100 posts you see, you see one ad for something you might actually give a shit about based on who you follow; for me that might be, say, Taco Bell or a Comedy Central or HBO show.) There are plenty of other ways to make it work that are way more organic and less intrusive. 

But instead, they’ve picked a flashy, shitty cop-out way without any thought to the user experience, just about looking cool. Oh man! Pins! Never seen that one before! 

I wouldn’t be such a dick about this kind of thing if I didn’t really care about the platform. It used to be something quite special. Now it’s getting so corporate its turning into a Banana Republic showroom sorry, Calvin Klien. 

Take a lesson from Twitter and don’t fuck with your product.