Tumblr

From a usability standpoint, Tumblr is very good. It's one of the most user-friendly blogging sites currently available, and it's intuitive enough to use that most people should be able to work out how to use it within a week or two of signing up.

This comes with a flipside, though. Because of its ease-of-use, it's gathered enough of a young user base that Tumblr could be described as the Twitter of the blogging world. There's not always a great market for lengthy text posts like there is on Wordpress, so you'd better learn to be succinct if you want to gather any kind of real following on the site.

Having said this, the ease-of-use also makes it one of the better sites if you want to have a good place to find stuff related to your main fandoms or if you're into photography and stuff like that. Plus there's actually a pretty active writing side of Tumblr, so if you're looking for resources to improve your writing, there's stuff on Tumblr to help you with this as well.

The place where this usability falls apart is that while the interface is simple and easy to use, it's not always the best. Because of this, it's often necessary to use the X-Kit extension, which gives you the option of using a number of features that makes the site better.

Unfortunately, Tumblr has garnered a reputation for being a site with a toxic culture. This is absolutely true to some extent--some of the controversies that occur are things that would never be controversial in ordinary, reasonable circles. Sometimes people get crucified on Tumblr for nothing more than unfounded rumours (which is what happened to the original XKit guy), or because they produced some fan-art somebody was unhappy with (which has also happened).

I think it is starting to get to the point where a lot of Tumblr users frown upon people being like this, though. You'll sometimes see posts with tens of thousands of notes where people tell teens not to be like this, or not to base their entire worldview on what happens on Tumblr. I think part of this is because of the huge backlash against the more insane elements of the Tumblr culture that's happened in recent years, and another part simply because a lot of the users that were teenagers in 2011-2014 are now in their twenties.

While the main chunk of Tumblr is left wing, there are large chunks of the site that are pretty conservative. Unfortunately, some of the more conservative users on the site are just as bad for lacking any real nuance in their thought and arguments as the left-wingers they so often criticise for being whiny snowflakes.

There is this political side to Tumblr, but I don't think it's any more cancerous and lacking in nuance than the political side of Reddit or your typical Facebook political meme page for the most part. Plus, it's not like it was a few years ago--it's now possible to avoid most of the political hubris of the Tumblr culture altogether.

For the most part, Tumblr is what you make of it. If you want it to mostly be photography or aesthetic stuff, you can mostly follow that kind of blog and it'll be fine. Same thing with fandoms (though some are hugely more popular than others, as is the case on every site).

This is the part that I think a lot of people tend to forget about the site, and why a lot of people tend to have a bad time with it. If that as long as you have XKit and you use a bit of editorial caution when it comes to who you follow, you can have a great time on Tumblr. Just don't take anything on there too seriously and you'll be fine for the most part.

I joined Tumblr to find "older" photos, which I did, that's great, and to "publicize" my Instagram account.
I couldn't post from the Insta app to Tumblr, so I had to do it directly. Which is good really, since it turned out it counts as a reblogged post, therefore doesn't appear in the searches. Yeah, that's a con. So is the fact that only the first 20 tags can be found, although 30 is permitted.
No way to find a reblogged post through tags. Even if it's my own, if I want it to be found, I have to create a new post.
Creating quality content is time consuming everywhere, but Tumblr is less "rewarding" than any site I've seen before. Very few people - I've encountered with - actually use it. Unless you have a steady fanbase, it is hard to get followers - I don't really care about that anymore - you barely get likes or reblogs. That's the way I hoped to find similar blogs to mine, but it doesn't work, only on accidental level. I've tried various times of the day for posting, didn't work either, whatever the "statistics" say I cannot say that matters. I couldn't figure it out what's behind the magic of getting thousands of notices in 3-4 days.
"Staff Picks" is look like the site was operating by anime fan teenagers: that's it, anime fanfic, kitties-puppies, annoying gifs and stupid "artworks" mostly. Not a single artistic or mentionable travel photography.
"Tumblr Labs is a collection of experiments we're working on that might turn out to be useful, fun, both, or neither. They're not official or anything, so if something overly weird happens, don't contact our support team. Just turn the dang thing off." - Sounds very professional and ethical...
I've seen a number of users using irrelevant, but popular tags for notices and followers. Like a stock photo (claiming it's original content/own - it is, just someone else's) of some antique books was tagged with "hollywood", "pc games", "anime", "make up", "celebrities", etc and the sad thing it appears it works. Pathetic.
I gained a number of political/religious followers, they obviously do not follow my blog for photography, travel and fashion - I keep ignoring them. I haven't really recieved inappropriate messages so far (1-2), although recently sugardaddies found me. Lately multiple p*rn blogs started to follow me, I don't make a fuss about it, just block them, they're pathetic. That's why I always check who reblogged my posts and if I see someone inappropriate did it, by blocking them my post disappeares from their blog.
Many people don't like, just reblog the posts - I understand somewhere, since it stacks in your Likes. On the other hand, many people grab my photos and write some influencer rubbish under them, taking them out of context. I'm glad Tumblr and my watermark make clear those photos are mine.
Hard to find posts, partially because of the poor structure and poor management of the site. Say, a fashion photo gets uploaded/reblogged on an Adult content-flagged blog, you have no access to the archive (doesn't matter if the photo in question is not adult content). It's beyond me. Meaning if it's an older photo you have to scroll through the entire blog, which could be problematic if there are thousands of posts in the blog. Nerve-wracking, wasting the user's time for one post. Even with Cascadr or similar sites. Other sites simply blur out adult-content photos and flag them one by one, why not Tumblr?
There are really shamless blogs I've encountered, unfiltered and there are tasteful, artistic photos flagged as adult-content - which are not, according to the rules. Poor management.
The Dashboard is a catastrophe, especially if you want to edit your Queue and Draft, hours of scrolling up and down and lots of facepalms and startover again and again. The mass post editor is almost useless, barely more than a tag-editor.
By the way, "older photos". Almost every - if not all - artist I follow elsewhere, left Tumblr for Instagram years ago, this shows its significance. Preferences.
One thing is Tumblr has way less tags than Instagram and users don't even bother to use them, so it's easier to find anything over there. It also means Tumblr has older photos to explore without scrolling through thousands on Insta.
Another one: for instance, on Flickr (maybe Fb too? I'm not sure) you have an option to allow or not allow your uploaded photos others to download/save, Tumblr has no such function. If you upload something, anyone can take it - and they do. That would not be a problem if these people would give credit and a fashion photo would not wind up in an inappropriate blog, but they mostly don't. I watermarked all my photos, just in case.
Today I found three of my posted photos, surfing on a page and told the person to delete it or give credit to the photographer. They said, it's okay, done. They didn't do it of course. Instead before I could block, they quickly liked plenty of my posts, so they can save and post them later. I blocked them anyway immediately. I can't do anything about it. I cannot report, as it's not a copyright issue. I got that photo from the original owner, but I always give credit to all participants, places, where and when they were published, etc. They are photographers, MUAs, stylists I respect and follow their work since years. It's not the "stealing" bothers me the most (those photos are not mine technically, therefore they cannot be stolen from me, plus they were already published somewhere), but this kind of behaviour: demeanors that of a bully, they clearly let me know "you don't like it, I'm gonna take more". (How do I know it was taken from me and not from the published one? I took a look on their other posts and they clearly not the type who would read the artist's magazine read by a few it was published in, long ago. Also their weird, quick reaction. Gotcha.)
Secondary inconvenience I've found: I don't know which site generates the problem - or what's going on -, but on Tumblr you can pin photos (with the Pinterest app), however if you try to access them from Pinterest it only throws you to your own dashboard (or I don't know where, if you don't have a Tumblr account). The link actually doesn't lead to the photo you pinned.
I think I'm finished with the uploading and bothering with the posting, after my current queue and draft went out. I already invested a lot of time in them, so I don't want to just delete them, but it doesn't worth the energy.

Well, quite flexible and easy platform for blogging but needs a SERIOUS monitoring to ward off porn / explicit content.

Its fun to tinker with but its kind of confusing to use. It is also hard to actually socialize with others who share my interests on this site. I don't always know when people reblog my posts and I have to kinda dig to find the replies. Also seeing something popular over and over again while great original content gets ignored isn't good.

Also some of the users are really rude and obnoxious if you are into certain things. For the most part it isn't a problem but there are some small groups of users who are very vocal and obnoxious.

It's a well built platform, but it seems the only people who use this site are teenage girls trying to post "emotional" pictures and GIFs of their favorite television series'...

At first this seems like a really cool website. But it gets really boring really fast. You can't interact with other members easily. You can't comment on others' posts. It seems like it discourages social interaction.
Also one can get followers really easily which is nice and fun, but it can only be so much fun.

Good website. Love that the blog page can be customized to your liking with HTML and CSS. Love the idea of micro-blogging. Love a lot of images I found there. Love that I don't have to sell my kidney to use it unlike Facebook. A very simple and easy to use website. But unfortunately, it came with many downfalls which led to me not using it anymore.

- Note that a lot of Tumblr users depending on your interests, are going to be people of all kinds of attitudes. Unfortunately for me, I loved landscapes and reblog landscape photos all the time and one person I followed and reblogged from publically humiliated me by screenshot and laughed with her other friends on Tumblr on all the pictures I reblogged from her at once. That was immature. I unfollowed her and her friends and hated those snotty teenagers who think they're "Tumblr famous" and all that non-sense.

- If you want to protect your work or your music, you will be disappointed. I have seen people's photography posted up, modified, etc. Music being uploaded, etc.

- Lastly, if you do not want to see any porn, you might want to be careful with your searches. I hate to be judgmental, but I was quite disgusted with a lot of the images and animated. Gifs being posted on Tumblr. Watch out for the porn blogs.

In other words, Tumblr has a great concept but has extremely poor management. It's sickening that a community like Tumblr was created where users are so quickly to attack, quickly offended and constantly harassing other users or humiliating them to no end. And you can't even block the porn even if you wanted to; I bumped into so much of it by accident, no joke.