With an active user base and a high retention rate, Tumblr has carved out a dedicated niche of users. Founded in 2007 by high school dropout David Karp, Tumblr is noted for its impressive growth and unique design. In 2013, Karp sold Tumblr to Yahoo! for $1.1 billion while maintaining his leadership position as CEO of the company. As of August 1, 2014, Tumblr hosts nearly 200 million blogs and more than 83.1 billion posts in total with over 95 million posts created each day. While Tumblr is extremely good at what it does best—allowing users to easily generate, explore, and share content all from a user’s dashboard—a number of limited features prevent users from using the site intuitively and intelligently.

Most of the suggestions I talk about may be similar to features on other social networks. But I am not saying Tumblr should become another Facebook. In fact, many of my ideas focus on Tumblr’s unique social network and draw on the distinct differences between Tumblr and other social networks. Lastly, there is little evidence behind these suggestions than observation and communication with other Tumblr users. These ideas may not work in practice, but the principles behind them should be kept in mind as Tumblr and its users’ behavior continue to evolve.

Messaging System

One of Tumblr’s greatest strengths is the structure of its social network. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, Tumblr is one of the few sites where users can easily form friendships with people they don’t know in real life. Networks like Facebook and Google+ rely deeply on convincing users to import contacts with the idea that the more people you know in real life, the more time you’ll spend on the site. Without them, the site feels empty and there’s little to do. And while it’s possible to meet new people on Twitter, the character limits make it difficult to fully engage in a conversation with someone new.

Though Tumblr users are initially asked to import their contacts as well, the user experience remains largely unaffected if they choose not to. For now at least, Tumblr doesn’t force users to identify themselves beyond an anonymous username, possibly fueling users’ ability to shed their real life identities and create their own online personas. Tumblr’s content diversity allows them to blog about anything that piques their interest—books, shows, science, news, art, music—and find people with similar interests. The friendships on Facebook are based largely on something rather arbitrary: geographic location. But friendships based on common interests and experiences tend to be far more meaningful, even while separated by hundreds or thousands of miles. And this is what I’ve heard from other Tumblr users. The friendships they form tend to be rich and supportive and may even move to email, texting, or other social networks to stay in touch.

But Tumblr has done little to adapt to these social habits. The messaging system they provide is best suited for the occasional question or compliment on someone’s work. Tumblr started off as a creative platform for artists to create and share their content so it’s no surprise that the messaging system may once have been thought of as a convenient way to send a quick message. But today, users are also using Tumblr’s messages as a kind of IM, especially as friendships form between users who follow each other. Otherwise, they leave the site altogether to talk through Facebook or texting.

In light of the way users are interacting with others, the message system seems more like a barrier to communicating with the people you care most about. Once you respond to a message privately, it’s likely never seen again. It ends up being deleted or gathering dust in the other person’s inbox. Messages also lack a date or timestamp so you have no idea when you received them. A number of social networks and chat apps have seemed to master mobile and desktop communication while Tumblr’s Inbox appears ancient by comparison.

By adding a chat feature similar to Facebook’s—with the ability to see conversation history—to the current Inbox, users would be able to stay in touch and ultimately spend more time on Tumblr. Unlike Facebook, though, Tumblr users can potentially get messages from a large number of people, some of them anonymous and many of them complete strangers. For these kinds of people, the current messaging system works quite well. And having a new chat window open for every user who sent you a message would be unwieldy. But for those who talk more regularly, it’s an ideal way to keep in touch.

Accompanying this chat feature would be a list of mutual followers (the people you most likely have talked to back and forth) who are currently online. For security reasons, only those you mutually follow would be able to start a chat with you, similar to Twitter’s Direct Message feature. Everyone else would have to use the primary messenger that appears on the site now.

Another way of improving Tumblr’s unique social network might be to create a Friendship page like Facebook’s that would be designed like the current Dashboard and provide posts the users have reblogged/liked from each other as well as a message history. You would also be able to chat directly from this page as well as see if they are online.

Other general message improvements could be:

• a way to respond to anonymous messages privately without revealing the identity of the sender.
• showing the text of a message while responding to it on the mobile app. Currently, the text box covers the text of the question, making it so users have to tap “Cancel” if they want to see the question again and lose whatever part of the answer they’ve already written.
• getting rid of fanmail. It’s clunky, redundant, has a poor design, and is annoying to respond to. Oh, and it can’t be turned off. It reminds of the skeuomorphism Apple’s Scott Forstall loved until it was killed by Jony Ive’s iOS 7.

Bookmarks

Currently, the Likes feature on Tumblr is static and chaotic. Once you like a post, it just sort of sits there. A mixture of Doctor Who gifs, funny photosets, quotes, and inside jokes, many of your Likes will most likely never be seen again. And that’s fine for the vast majority of the posts we like. We don’t need to see them again. We like posts for all sorts of reasons, but ultimately, we usually like something to make a statement, to say, “I connect with this, I agree with this, I understand this.” But we also like posts as a way of “saving” or “bookmarking” them—a purpose that Likes are wholly unsuited for.

One solution is to create a Bookmarks section underneath Likes for posts a user wants to save for future reference—a song to listen to later, a recipe to try out for dinner, or a master list of movies to watch. The feature would automatically and intelligently sort these bookmarked posts based on tags and post type as well as looking at what the user has bookmarked in the past.

Mobile Notifications

Currently, Tumblr sends push notifications for all reblogs, likes, and replies and users can select to receive them from everyone, people you follow, or no one. But when it comes to the notifications users care about most—like knowing when they receive a message, when someone answers their message publicly, or when they’re tagged or mentioned—we’re left to go searching through the app (and on the desktop) to find the answer. By incorporating these notifications, users can better interact with their followers and respond to messages more quickly.

Have anymore suggestions? Mention them here, tweet me at @AlexLenkei94, or, you know, send me a message on Tumblr.