I wouldn’t want to be just joining Tumblr right now

danielholter:

themattsmith:

This is not a “get off my lawn” post, I promise, but Tumblr’s hot right now. Tumblr’s HUGE right now.

I joined Tumblr in February of 2008. More than HALF of the people I follow now are people I started following in the first 6 months of using Tumblr, mainly because we had something in common- we were using Tumblr when basically no one else was, we were probably compatible personalities.

That’s not just not the case anymore. I’m not necessarily lamenting that fact, it’s just the way things go. Tumblr is a powerful platform and it is getting the recognition it deserves, it’s just that the sense of community that drew me to it in the first place is something that has to die as Tumblr frantically tries to scale.

Matt and I joined the same day, if memory serves. (hey Matt, do you remember the website that was using tumblr that I ran into your office to share? I’m stumped.)

I don’t think that “something has to die,” but I do think those early days were certainly a different kind of community… or possibly much more like a single widely-scattered and loosely-connected school of fish as opposed to the millions of unique and separate schools of fish now swimming side by side in this massive (and growing) ocean known as tumblr.

One of my favorite things about tumblr is seeing those various schools/communities overlap is surprising ways, and I don’t think adding more circles to the pool diminishes the power of the original circle as long as the participants are still invested and involved.

I agree! I joined Tumblr on May 10th, 2008. Most of the people I follow are people that I followed at the time I joined. I actually went through and removed a lot of blogs that were spamming up my dashboard and the only ones that remain are those few from the beginning.

The way I use Tumblr has come a long way but it the website I’ve stuck with the longest. I’ve had quite a few blogs but this is the one that I’ve continued to use and keep up with.

Great post!

(via apoplecticskeptic)

Source: themattsmith