I have two Tumblrs. The first is a mess of a place where I exorcise all the bumf I like on the intertubes- I don’t care too much who reads or follows it as its just a space for me to sound off. The second however is a film poster design Tumblr with a comparatively strong following that I am keen to see do well. Although they’re on the same platform these are two very different spaces for me. However, now thanks to the launch of Tumblarity both of have been dragged into the same nonsensical and absurd popularity contest.

Tumblarity was launched around mid May and was inspired by the ‘WeFollow‘ twitter directory and is a neat little number displayed on your dashboard declaring the success of your blog. The figure is rumoured to be calculated on ‘recent’ reblogs, posts, likes, followers and the phases of the moon. Until recently I had little basis for comparison with my new numbers so didn’t pay them much attention, but having seen the figures of other people (namely those who enjoy reblogging A LOT of twilight pictures, and attempt to use tumblr to conduct long conversations across posts) I’m shocked at how badly my film design blog comes off. Lets compare…

1) Anon persistent reblogger Tumblr
Posts: 1714
Followers: 77
Likes: 2970 (average of 1.7 likes per post)
Reblogs: 696 (average of 0.4 reblogs per post)
Tumblarity = 2001

2) My Film Poster Tumblr
Posts: 62
Followers: 470
Likes: 492 (average of 7.9 likes per post)
Reblogs: 142 (average of 2.3 reblogs per post)
Tumblarity= 96

Okay I’m not posting as often and I am not engaging in a community by reblogging in the same way as the other guy, but does routinely posting original content, or maintaining a strong consistent presence count for anything?

What makes me angry is not just the fact that my blogs are loosing in this contest, but that tumblarity clearly favours sites which reblog everything and anything over those posting original content in a timely manner. Just a look at the newly Tumblarity figure ranked directory will highlight how some of the most well known Tumblrs have been booted out “Sorry Lunch Bag Art, one post a day of original content is not good enough compared to this 18 year old reblogging ‘fuckyeahtwilightbumf’ “

I know it must be hard to find a formula to rate peoples Tumblrs by boiling them down to a number with no human editorial- especially when people use it in such diverse ways- so why bother doing it at all? This kind of summarising of sites is something I wouldn’t mind if it was through a third party in the way that most twitter popularity ratings are. But for Tumblr to have built this in as its key statistic either encourages a messy reblog echo chamber of a community, or alienates its users (and a quick search on google proves that the latter seems to be the more common reaction).

But I’m not going to waste my anger on it, instead I’m going to ignore the figure and the tumblr directories from now on. Tumblr is still an easy, clean and quick blogging platform that suits the blogs format regardless of whatever cyber pissing contests they try to rope me into.