May/090
On Tumblr, No One Has To Know You're Un Popular
My addiction to my Tumblr stream is so strong I had to install LeechBlock in order to get anything done. The mindless way I would just refresh my Tumblr page and not even participate in the culture of copying known as the "reblog" (where a Tumblr user just blogs someone's post, typically with no comment of their own) , just idly reading or watching what people were posting, was making me lose it. So, I've been experimenting with detoxing. It's hard, but I'm (mostly) avoiding it.
But I bring up Tumblr because they just introduced Tumblarity, an index of your popularity on the site. Alice Marwick posted a really smart take on it, explaining how Tumblarity is a number that stands for social status. What Tumblarity reminds me more of is when Yelp introduced a similar feature way back in 2006, a directory of Yelpers listed in order of popularity, and "useful, funny, cool" votes (you can vote on every Yelp review for its usefulness, coolness and humor). The difference was that Yelp made all of these numbers public. When Yelp introduced that feature, the site did take on a popularity contest vibe, with Yelpers competing to see who could be in the top lists for most funny or most cool (no one wants to be most "useful").
I find it interesting that Tumblr isn't placing these in public places, and that you still can't see how many followers a particular Tumblr has, or even who people are following. Some of the Tumblr templates allow you to put the list of people you follow on your blog, but no one has any way of knowing what your Tumblarity is or how many followers you have unless you tell them. This weird omission fosters what I've always felt about Tumblr, that the way it's structured intentionally creates lots of isolated cliques that only read and reblog each other. Unlike Yelp, which forces you to interact with people outside your friends list by logging you in to a main page every time time you go to it. Or, like Livejournal (what I consider the Tumblr of the early days), which also creates more interaction outside your main circle with its communities and by virtue of letting you see who your friends are reading.
I don't think Tumblarity means much for now. Since no one knows your number but you (and the people immediately above and below you on the list, which is ever changing) the status it signifies only means as much as you want it to. If Tumblr were to take all these directories public, we'd see a lot more angling for followers, likes and reblogs (if that's even possible).