Tumblr

[amalthia]

You know when fandom talks about Tumblr it sounds like a great service. What no one mentions is that if your internet is too slow, all you'll see on your tumblr feed, is a bunch of blank squares where the images/gifs should display. Occasionally, a bright spot will appear as one gif out of six loaded.

I gotta say this much for Dreamwidth/LJ at least when I scroll down my flist I see something.

Comments

[sholio]

It's not just the internet, it's Tumblr itself - it has been REALLY awful about it lately. A friend and I have been semi-joking that it feels like being back on dial-up. It's just not loading stuff. The main point to Tumblr is the images, and going on there to enjoy some nice gifs and then having a dash full of blank boxes is insanely frustrating.

[amalthia]

Man, I should have said something sooner, this whole time I thought I was the only one experiencing these issues. It definitely feels like dial up.

[trobadora]

Ha, half the time if I try to load a tumblr page it just refuses to fully load anyway, even if my internet connection is fine.

[amalthia]

All this time, I really thought it was just my computer/internet! I'm surprised I haven't heard more from people complaining about this problem.

[trobadora]

I always figured it worked better if you were logged in, which I'm usually not. (I theoretically have an account, but I don't actually use it other than to check some tags every once in a blue moon.)

[amalthia]

I've tried logged in and un-logged and it didn't seem to make a difference.

[trobadora]

Huh. That makes it even more inexplicable to me why so many people use tumblr so much ...

[amalthia]

I'm a bit baffled now too. When it was just me I figured everyone else was having a good time looking at pictures but if everyone is seeing white boxes of nothing then I don't get why people still use Tumblr???

[blnchflr]

Seconding this - I don’t have a tumblr, just used to stalk some fannish ones, and figured it was me not having my own tumblr/not using the app/not having fast enough internet/fast enough phone, etc. I don’t understand how people can use it if it’s like this for everyone O___O

[trobadora]

Yeah, I don't understand it either. And that's not even mentioning infinite scroll crashing my browser ...

[lilacsigil]

Same, even at the times my internet *is* going okay! (never fast, but okay)

[yourlibrarian]

I have been seeing more blank boxes too, but then I've always had technical problems with Tumblr. A lot of video clips show up as stills with no play function. And it has caused so many browser freezes over the past 2 years that I run nothing but Tumblr on an entirely separate browser just so I won't have to keep rebooting and losing my tabs.

Then there's also the inability to like or reblog stuff I open in a separate tab, the difficulty in getting a page link if I'm opening a post from a search and so on. And I have to read anything with comments in my dashboard only because anything with more than 5 replies becomes unreadable in its nesting. It is so poorly functional to me, I can only assume it became a widely used site simply for the ability to upload images with no limits.

[amalthia]

It sounds like we're not the only ones experiencing these issues. I guess Tumblr became too popular and can't handle the traffic for an image heavy website. :( I'll have to keep your trick in mind for re-blogging.

[catalenamara]

tumblr's always been a frustrating experience. I haven't been there enough lately to know if if it's still the case, but awhile back my browser would freeze up after I'd gone down a certain number of posts and I'd have to do an control-alt-delete to get out of my browser and start again. Very frustrating.

[amalthia]

I'm at the about ready to give up on Tumblr level of frustration. On the bright side, in my case, I have not had Tumblr crash my browser. Knock on wood...

[catalenamara]

The issues with tumblr sure discourage me from going there. Most of the time I wind up there now is through Google or Facebook links.

[calystarose]

I do like the stability of the dwth architecture, that's for sure

[amalthia]

Agreed, but I think they started with invites and then once that tested okay they opened it up to everyone. I don't know if Tumblr went through a similar phase of testing. Also, Tumblr is heavy on images so I'm sure that eats up more resources.