

The Fashion Industry Wants Tumblr to Get its Fucking Act Together - Ataub24
http://www.betabeat.com/2011/08/31/ann-taylor-begs-tumblr-to-get-its-fucking-act-together/

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thesethings
I love Tumblr and get a lot of value from it both personally and
professionally. I also regularly recommend it. (I start off with with this
endorsement because I'm about to point out some opportunities for improvement
that I don't want anybody to interpret as reasons not to use it. No matter
what, you should probably be using it like people 2.5 years ago should have
been starting to think about how they/if could use Twitter for their
projects/socializing.)

On the one hand, Tumblr's lack of _internal_ analytics (as referenced in this
article) is a major weakness of almost all social networks. But on the other,
users and businesses feel the pain more acutely on Tumblr than on other sites.
It's a bit chicken and egg, but Tumblr is best consumed through its internal
Dashboard, and many social interactions on Tumblr are invisible through any
other interface. (When you see a Tumblr out on the web, it looks just like a
normal website, but people "inside" the system are having a giant party you
don't know about.)

Tumblr's API (very recently updated, I may be slightly behind on everything it
supports) does not giving visibility to a lot of this stuff, so there's no
rich ecosystem of clients like Twitter has. One can argue how well Twitter
handles its developer community, but there's no denying that all the little
tools out there, even if they only get "stolen" by Twitter in the end, give
Twitter visibility to what users want.

Let's start with search. Twitter's original search was much worse than it is
today (bad timing for me to write this, as for about a month now, Twitter
search has been slightly broken). They bought Summize, who did search very
well. In fact, Summize also did the first iteration of trending topics (which
even if they make you worry about America, is a fascinating and incredible
thing to have around).

Tumblr's personal search has been broken for about 3 years (longer?). There is
pretty much no global search. (And not supported in API.)

The Twitter ecosystem also has a whole bunch of little point tools like "Where
are your followers located?" and "What tags do you use the most?"

Tumblr at one point asked you what city you were in during onboarding, yet
that data is nowhere to be seen, even by the account owner.

I'll stop with my examples. My point is mostly that sure, Tumblr could make an
analytics dashboard. That would be great. OR, it could provide more data
through the API, and I'm sure a developer community would spring up to meet
many of these needs, and some we haven't even thought of.

~~~
tlack
I wonder how much of this could be rigged together with smart Javascript tags
dropped around the template? Have you looked in to that option?

We're definitely starting to embrace Tumblr at work, and even though we
haven't really looked into the analytical/demographic aspect of it, it would
be wise to know what's on the horizon for us.

~~~
thesethings
That does address one's _own_ Tumblr Dashboard when logged in. And there has
been one browser extension that's gotten quite popular- Missing-E. But it's
gone through battles with Tumblr, and also doesn't solve the "global" issue: I
don't just wanna see stuff about me, I want to discover stuff outside my
account. Example, "Who blogs about farmers markets in Miami?" Something like
this is app-able in twitter, but not Tumblr given its current API.

I do still recommend checking out Missing-E. Don't put it on all your browsers
(it can't keep up with Tumblr changes, and sometimes freezes). But it is
helpful. (It's available for FF, Chrome, and Safari.)
<http://blog.missinge.infraware.ca/>

------
jeremymcanally
Interestingly we just started work on a Tumblr analytics product. Will have to
advertise to the fashion industry soon... :)

~~~
busse
I'd be very curious to know how you're planning to measure the exposure of
posts within the Tumblr Dashboard? See my post "The Fashion industry wants
analytics from Tumblr, but what should they be looking at?"
<http://cbus.se/r3I80r> for more detail on how I'm exploring the Tumblr
Analytic "problem"

~~~
jeremymcanally
I think you bring up some really good points, but I think we've solved those
with some things we've been adding in. I see you do social media strategy
stuff from your blog; if you want to chat about how we can help you do your
job with this tool, feel free to email (username at gmail).

We're trying to tailor this to how people will actually use it. :)

