Fediverse

Tumblr was a lot of fun. Yes it is a microblogging platform, but that doesn't explain what the appeal was. I have no idea what the appeal is today as I left in 2015.

People would share text or image or links of things they liked, and if you reblogged it (shared to your own blog) the comment you added would be retained when someone reblogged your reblog, creating ludicrous chains of conversations that people would build and build on. They eventually became unreadable because they got squashed into one line. There was no way to comment without reblogging.

Tumblr predates influencer culture, and tumblr celebrities were not really a thing (except for @pizza by accident being tagged everywhere).

You also had a tag system, where you added hashtags to reblogs that were searchable. This way you would find topics you liked, and blogs to follow. If you followed you would get their reblogs in your home feed.

The blogs had custom CSS, with graphics and music playing but less free for all than MySpace. This made some blogs into minor art pieces, along with the things they reblogged. This was a big part of what made tumblr cool when websites all started going uniform and looking exactly the same.

For me the initial appeal was high def images. Instagram had not taken off, and so finding consistent high quality images of art, nature, sub culture and pop culture imagery or artists, porn etc. was not as obvious as it is today.

I loved tumblr but eventually got bored. Eventually they killed custom CSS and porn, and basically made tumblr worthless for anyone who wasn't into fandoms (/s but kind of not. I have no idea what happens on tumblr today).