Tumblr’s Transition: Basic to Breathtaking
Tumblr, a microblogging and social network site, has been an outlet for users to post whatever they please as well as discover more about topics that interest them. Founded in early 2007, Tumblr has grown tremendously in content, style, and membership. I chose this site to historically review because I personally have used Tumblr since early 2010 and starkly recall the website’s changes throughout the years. Using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, I searched through the history of Tumblr’s main log-in page from February 2007 to the current day. The structure of the website’s home page is what has changed the most as it has had to adapt to the needs of the users throughout the years. In earliest screenshots of the site in 2007, the layout is white, simple, and basic with three hyperlinks for “Log in”, “Sign Up”, and “FAQs.”
Six months later, only several additions were made to the site with an option to “Start Your Own in 30 Seconds” as well as an area to see the day’s top “tumblelogs.” The first big jump that Tumblr developers and web designers make it the decision to have the trademarked teal blue background and restyle the logo. The screenshot from December 2007 is remotely recognizable to today’s format as it has the noticeable background color, but does not have feature any popular blog posts. Instead, the screenshot has several broken links and access to the site’s content policy, terms of service, privacy policy, and support.
Up to this point, each update of the Tumblr log-in page comes with negatives as well as positives. Content samples from the website begin to form on the homepage in late 2008. The photos and blog posts are poorly organized and not incredibly appealing, but is a big step in advertising what the website has to offer it’s users. The organization of content was fixed within months to become a more easily accessible site. This composition remained the website’s format for the next year and a half with only minimal and practically unnoticeable changes.
In 2012, after two years of little to no format or cosmetic changes, Tumblr’s web designers transformed the Tumblr homepage to resemble the experience of being within the site as a user. Blog posts from popular users are featured on the page and appear as if I were logged in to an account. A post by the blog 1000scientists is an edited photo that gives users the option to ‘reblog’ or ‘like’ the post and look at how many other users have interacted with the post. The right hand column gives the option to search tumblr for a specific topic or user, and also recommends ‘tags’ and blogs that may interest me, tags such as: food, makeup, artists on tumblr, news. The addition of these tags and blog suggestions further engages the user to dig deeper into the world of Tumblr and discover more. For their final and most recent update, Tumblr developers pushed the envelope even further to creatively and simplistically explain how the blogging site works. Through every website update, the page has featured an easy-to-use sign up and simple elegance that keeps users coming back. Today, Tumblr’s homepage is constantly changing as a different background image is displayed each time the page is loaded. The site now has over 334.1 million blogs and 555 million monthly visitors. The artistic, simplistic, and cosmetic updates to the homepage has made this website blossom into what it is today.
