Google Net Neutrality Ad [2006]
Recycle this ad and let’s use it for SOPA
Tumblr Reshare Problem
A time ago I talked about of how perfect is Tumblr because their so-well-focused-on-content platform, but as everything in life things can’t be perfect and the good things also can have side effects.
I run another Tumblog by9, wich is focused on Design and its disciplines. One of my favorites things is graphic design and occassionally I do a couple of designs, like this parody about coca-cola logo saying “Horchata”. As a logic thing, I posted my own design in my personal blog and also in by9, as I expected and thanks to the easy of share platform of Tumblr my image have achieved almost 400 notes to the date.
Unfortunately the easy share platform of Tumblr and the internet itself also make hard to control who share your work without keeping the original source. Hence this blog called Alice Cocaine reupload my image with a poor quality and sourceless:
http://alicekokaine.tumblr.com/post/14199131615
When the post had around 1 thousand notes (right now the post has around 3,600 notes), I kindly ask to this lady to include the original source because I was the author, she didn’t reply me. I ask her again a couple of times but I didn’t receive a answer from her. In fact she put as source his own Tumbrl URL so you can call it an omission from her but maybe a malicious act of becoming popular.
It is a contradictory thing because Tumblr describes itself as a large community of creative people and a note of the Terms Of Use says “Tumblr is the easiest way to share the things you do, find, love, think, or create. You own and control what you share on Tumblr”. Despite this statements the platform of Tumblr with around 41 millions active blogs make really hard the taks of control of the content.
But I didn’t create this post for complaining about this problem I really think that already exist a solution.
The only way that Tumblr can prevent to someone else upload your work, is by indexing every single image uploaded to its servers and made a little search by image after you upload the file. Google already do search by image and makes it extraordinary well! Just a couple of seconds for know the origin and other data of the image. I don’t know if the “search by image” from google can be implemented on a site just like the normal search engine does, but it will be nice to have this inside Tumblr. TinEye do the same thing, search the image and tells you wich website store the same image.
This step can be implemented by Tumblr:
1. You upload an image.
2. Write your text.
3. Tumblr analyze your image and look for similar ones inside.
4. If finds a similar image a window will appear and will tell you “there’s a record from example.tumblr.com which has a similar image. Do you prefer reblog this post? or continue”
I made a mock up as example:
The suggestion of who is the owner of the original post will be based on the first who posted on Tumblr.
This step as you can see is just a warning, it doesn’t forces you to don’t upload new content. But it can be useful to create consciousness and really respect the copyright. Also can help to clean the wasted space that use duplicated images on Tumblr’s servers. With a simple search you can see there are same images used hundred of times and each one use a space in the servers, Tumblr can be more efficient using its servers and save some space.
This is part of my thoughts about Tumblr, you can read the first part here.
There is a strong rumor on the web that surely you already have heard, the next generation Macbook Pro will have a redesign and will drop out the optical drive. Maybe you don’t have to be a avid analyst of the industry to know the use of the optical drives nowadays isn’t so needed like a couple of years ago.
Without a optical drive it would be less space to use, and this could be a great chance to reduce the thick of the Macbook Pro.
The designer Jørgen Langevad figure out how a Macbook Pro would look with this new redesign: Slimmer. Lighter and faster
Is Twitter missing something?
Twitter is Microblogging service; that’s how the press and other websites describe this company, you can see it here at Crunchbase or even in Wikipedia. But how Twitter describes itself? You can read it here in their about page. And as you notice Twitter does not mention anything about “Blog”, they describe it as an “information network”, maybe they go too shy with this concept, the whole internet can be called an information network. So maybe we have to rely more on the microblogging concept given by the press because is more accurate.
Ok now we all agree that Twitter is a microblogging service, that being said, Twitter maybe is loosing something.
The behaviour is: you post something (140 character of course): maybe a little piece of awesomeness of your mind, maybe a great link, maybe just bullshit; then repeat this step, trillions of time, in the meantime you get older (1..2…3.. years) and maybe you want to go back and remember some tweet of the past, as you tipically do in any blogging service like here in Tumblr with the Archive section or the side bar on Blogspot or any other blogging service that has an easy way to index your post in the time. But what about Twitter? in your timeline you just can go all the way down with its infinite scroll and look manually for your Tweets.
There are external apps that can help you with this task, but why an external app has to fulfill a essential feature of a service?. Maybe is a little bit hard to figure out how insert an index of your thousands of tweets, but a company already have the solution!: The timeline from Facebook.
Facebook has done a great job with the new Timeline, you can’t call it an index of your post, because is smarter than a simple index or archive. The exact same thing can be implemented on Twitter, a timeline where you can browse by year, then month and then by day, your tweets. Even can be smarter and put some of your tweets as featured: Tweets with replies, retweets or when someone mark as favorite some of your tweets, even go further and take in account the tweets that has been seen or linked in other sites like forums, Facebook, Storify, etc.
I made a mock up as an example (because I am a very graphical person):
When you click on Archive its show you the years since you sign up on Twitter, then you click a year and all the other years disappear and the year you clicked is moved to the left side, the white space is filled with months, and they do the same action when you click a month in order to show you the days. When a year or month is selected it’ll show you the featured tweets (automatically selected by Twitter or manually selected by you). When you scroll down to view all the Tweets, this archive bar goes all the way up and is fixed to the top.
Of course this my suggestion, of an implementation of a timeline on Twitter, it can be a lot of way to implement a GUI for a timeline. Let’s hope we can have this in the near future.
Why Tumblr is hard to monetize? Cause it’s perfect.
I love Tumblr. I love the community who build it, and I love its simplicity. Another thing that I love is that is completely free. But of course Tumblr is a Startup and has to be monetized in someway. Why Tumblr is around 4 years old and doesn’t have a clear way to make money?. Okay Tumblr has the Theme Garden wich has amazing and worth to pay themes but, isn’t anything comparable to Ads of Facebook for example.
My answer is: because is the perfect platform. And with this answer I try to be the most objective person as I can.
Here is my explanation: Tumblr is a social blogging tool, thats mean that you create content and you can interact and easely find and see other blogs. But is so well focused in the content that doesn’t fit anything else; and the fact that Tumblr doesn’t have a system of comments feed that feeling of a close platform focused exclusivily on the content.
The common behaviour is: you create a tumblog, then choose a theme that you liked, then you start to post content (any type of content: text, image, audio, video) , then with the time you start to gain followers and likes and reblogs, but they don’t need to go directly to your blog to see the content, they just see your post in their dashboard!. The dashboard is a different thing from your blog, cause they just see purily the content of your post without the frame that you choosed to use (the theme). The theme of a tumblog and any blog is merely a frame for show the content in a aesthetic way. Generally if you have advertising (the usual way to monetize something) in a site and you have a lot of audience that can be translated to clicks to your ads, and that is translated in money. And the rule of the web is that the Advertising is attached to the frame, not the content. But Tumblr is something different, you can have a lot of audience wich see your content through their dashboards, that’s means (withouth the frame that you choose). It is 100% pure content that you see. As example: I can read every single post that MG Siegler has written without to enter in his blog trought the domain parislemon.com. That’s why tumblr is hard to monetize through the common ad way, because it the perfect platform, no bullshit just content.
A different way of measure.
This special way of tumblr, also requires new parameters for measure your audience and your tumblog’s impact, since is so focused on the content. I realized this with my other tumblog: Celestica. This image, received around 1,000 notes the same day I posted it. That’s mean I can be pretty sure that at least a crowd of 1,000 people saw this image. But I can’t say the same thing with the visits to my whole blog, just 94 visits that day:
The difference between my tumblog visits and the notes of my post is ridiculous big. The way you analyze your audience in your tumblog it must to be slightly difference from any other blog platform, the notes (likes and reblogs) of course it is a important parameter that show engagement with your content. You can’t rely just on Google Analytics, google analytics isn’t fit so well in the whole platform of Tumblr. It will be nice if Tumblr had an own way of analyze the traffic of your own blog. Tumblr should adopt a kind of formula where takes in count the notes on your post and number of visitors and represent this by a number that gives you an idea of how healthy your tumblog is.
This is the first part of my thoughts about Tumblr.I hope to write around 4 parts talking about other interesting thing to take on count for figure out the monetization of tumblr and doing it a better place :)
![$85M in funding Tumblr can start whatever they want (strategie) without worring about money. Even they can buy Posterous if they wanted to.
(via Tumblr Numbers: The Rapid Rise of Social Blogging [INFOGRAPHIC])](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_luqjh0Lx9e1r4koh7o1_400.jpg)
$85M in funding Tumblr can start whatever they want (strategie) without worring about money. Even they can buy Posterous if they wanted to.
(via Tumblr Numbers: The Rapid Rise of Social Blogging [INFOGRAPHIC])
It’s amazing how things have changed, ten years ago a techie blog written by a guy from El Salvador can’t be possible without this connected world. Right now may a have the same power of speech that a any prominent american journalist. Maybe not, but a have by opportunities to have the same power :)
Begin
I was taking a shower, and suddendly came to me the idea of crowdsourcing, nowadays the crowdsourcing is the fashion, there is crowdsourcing for everything, but fortunaly also are a lot of taks who people doesn’t crowdsource yet.
And I think in web services, everyday we use web for mainly social purposes, we, the crowd, deserve a better services in the web, and sometimes sites like facebook, just launch new features, that in some cases they just quit cause the bad reception of the public.
I was thinking in create a site of complaints, but it will be more usefull create a site of suggestions, I won’t lose anything (maybe time), the worst thing that can happen is tha nobody in the whole world read this toughts. And the best thing is at least someone its agree with me and the ideas presented here.
