I'm Mike (or mcdavis).I make websites and love movies. I get all touchy feely with tumblr here. Be careful.
Contact:
mcdavis@gmail
(810) 275-0363
Google+ is a platform without personality - no sense of those integral early adopters who define the pathos of the site. Think of how Tumblr evolved, they’re one of the strongest examples out there of early adopters creating a vibrant culture. From a very close-knit circle of mostly tech kids and expanding outwards, one meme at a time. Where else can I shamelessly post Sailor Moon pictures? I never would put them on my Facebook.
Beyond that, I believe Google+ has already failed. I follow several people who worked on the Google+ team (found and followed thanks to this article) and some haven’t posted in days. If even the people who created the product aren’t using it, there’s no hope.
Could Google+ have succeeded under different circumstances? Sure. By not being a Google product. By experiencing organic, natural growth instead of being shoved into our email app. By having passionate founders working on a unique problem instead of a team of employees in a large corporation trying to force a product which encompasses the major features of every other existing social platform. By standing out. I’m saying they should’ve bought social.
—Lauren Leto, on Google+ - Will Google Goggles Work?
This is both commentary on how hard it is for big companies (Google, Apple, etc.) to play in social and an interesting thought in relation to the Facebook + Instagram acquisition. Facebook has the smarts to develop Instagram on their own, but they weren’t likely to achieve the same following and personality Instagram had. With photos at the very core of Facebook, it’s interesting to see they were smart enough to realize this.
Thoughts on the Tumblr + Spotify integration
With the Tumblr + Spotify integration that rolled out today (nice work Tumblr staff), we can likely make some assumptions and notes about the future of audio on Tumblr.
Expect the extinction of Tumblr hosted audio files
Tumblr has now set the default for an audio post to be SoundCloud or Spotify searching. To upload an audio file to Tumblr’s servers (technically Amazon S3’s servers…), you have to click a tiny link, switching the post type. With Spotify and SoundCloud audio posts not having limits in place like Tumblr hosted audio (1 file per day and under 10mb in size), they’re obviously going to get the majority of the action.
Tumblr has always appended “?plead=please-dont-download-this-or-our-lawyers-wont-let-us-host-audio” to their MP3s and my guess is they’re likely tired of worrying about the fact they were (and are) hosting so many copyright files. Pushing the Spotify integration immediately gives its users a way to share copyright music with Tumblr having to deal with any DMCA headaches. And for those looking to share custom audio files or unsigned artists, SoundCloud can easily host and manage those. Again, the burden of copyright issues is pushed on to SoundCloud as Tumblr is just embedding the files they’re hosting.
With these two deals, Tumblr has enough in place to drop the self-hosted option for audio posts with little to no backlash from its users. I’d expect this to silently disappear within the coming months.
A win for Spotify
Unlike the Facebook music integration, which partnered FB with both Spotify and Rdio, this partnership gives Spotify exclusive access to Tumblr’s userbase. As a Rdio subscriber, if you want to listen to an embedded Spotify song or playlist, you have to download their app at minimum. This will definitely help Spotify’s adoption as Tumblr has always been more of a place for sharing music than Facebook.
A loss for non-Spotify and exfm users
The new integration means that if you aren’t a Spotify user, there’s now a barrier to you in listening to music those you follow share. If you’re posting music for varied readership, you have to now consider that everyone may not have the Spotify app and will have to either download it or pass on listening to what you post. With Spotify having a somewhat free option, the barrier isn’t so high, but it’s still a barrier to consider.
As for exfm, it doesn’t (and likely won’t) have the ability to grab the music featured on your dashboard. I’ve always been a fan of how exfm could continue playing an audio file as I moved across pages and my typical workflow will likely suffer as the Spotify posts spread. Worse yet though, I’d bet that with the exfm/Tumblr integration having been so deep this is a major blow to their company and extension as a whole.
Affiliate commission?
Could Tumblr integrate Spotify in a deeper fashion to nab some affiliate money for those who join as a paying customer? Maybe they’re already doing this, but if not, it seems like an easy way to turn a good deal into a great deal.
As is the norm, this is all just speculation and assumptions on my part, so take what I’ve said with a grain of salt. Also, I’d like to give props to both teams for putting this partnership together. The seamless integration whether managing what’s playing on the website or the app is really clever and intuitive.
Bump’s new method to share photos from a mobile app to a computer is really clever.
Using simple technology (the phone’s accelerometer matched against the time the spacebar was pressed), they’re able to pull off a magical effect as the photo instantly appears on computer’s screen.
They’ve made photo sharing not only an intuitive process, but also into a really cool parlor trick.
It’s interesting that in Tumblr’s revamp of their Android app they’re putting a focus on the Radar by placing it in the top bar. Shifting more focus on to Radar (which has had focus on the Dashboard for ages now) could place it down a similar road as Twitter, using trends and discovery to not only highlight content but place advertising.
It should be noted that I don’t have any confirmation that this is what they’re really doing, but it would seem they’re stepping in that direction.
On a mobile-related note: it’s also interesting to consider how hard it so to develop apps for each ecosystem in parallel now. Tumblr’s Android app now has new focus and features that aren’t found on their iPhone app. The tables have been turned on previous releases and it seems like a difficult back-and-forth that companies with apps on multiple platforms are having to go through.
walex answered your question: This is what’s wrong with tech blogs. Everyone’s…
How does it benefit CNN, BBC, and CBC to all report about a major world news event? If they didn’t they’d look like fools.
I’m not saying don’t report on something at all. In fact, I’m encouraging them to write a useful piece on tech news.
What I’m pointing out is that each blog is writing multiple opinion pieces (often it seems only so someone else on staff can write a post contrary to that post after) that are only a few paragraphs of content in length and add little value to the reader.
Not to pick on TNW exclusively, but on their homepage they now have 11 posts about Instagram. Let’s break them down:
- News of the acquisition (1 post)
- Speculation on why it happened (one arguing it had to happen for FB to gain users, one saying it had to happen because Instagram is the Youtube for photos and one post saying it’s similar to Zuck’s fascination with Twitter and shouldn’t have happened)
- Exporting your data from Instagram (1 post)
- Speculation on SEC violations with the acquisition (1 post)
- Story of recently raised VC round that finalized a few days ago (1 post)
- Post based around photoshopped meme going around saying Instagram will be like the social reader app (1 post)
- Poll about whether you’ll leave Instagram (1 post)
- Prediction that Google will buy an Instagram competitor now (1 post)
- Alternatives to Instagram (1 post)
How many of those 11 do you really care to read? Which add value to the conversation and which are just hopping on the SEO and linkbait train to churn pageviews for ad money?
This is what’s wrong with tech blogs. Everyone’s rushing to pump out so much content about the same news that it results in a dozens of low value, low content posts per blog.
How does this benefit anyone? Why would I want to read each (let alone any) of these?
This has been my morning.
A few notes:
- You can still access incoming email via exchange and Sparrow. Sending it is questionable though (I’m sure getting around these restrictions only exacerbates the issue though).
- I wonder what triggered this (I was sleeping when it was triggered and don’t use any extensions or plugins or file sharing via my email account).
- My reliance on Google services leaves me crippled when they’re not working.
- As with everything Google, support is non-existant. I do pay Google for email (I ran out of free storage long ago) and apparently have no recourse.
