Cool people don't use E when they don't have to December 29, 2010 6:08 PM Subscribe
I've got a hopefully diminutive pony request, for which I will bring many tasty sugarcubes: Could we get tumblr listed under the Social Apps dropdown box on our profiles?
No big deal or anything, but my tumblr has been my primary mode of random blogging for a while, and there was this post that brought me a good number of very interesting contributions to my dashboard. I'd like to find more of them. Thanks!
No big deal or anything, but my tumblr has been my primary mode of random blogging for a while, and there was this post that brought me a good number of very interesting contributions to my dashboard. I'd like to find more of them. Thanks!
I don't have a dog in this pony, but why is that? Profiles are non-indexed, the links are nofollow, what is the concern?
posted by Gator at 6:30 PM on December 29, 2010
posted by Gator at 6:30 PM on December 29, 2010
That is an arbitrary decision. I'd like to know why linking directly to content is a bad thing, when we can link to anything in the body of our profiles? So, if there was a default profile page on tumblr, it would be just fine? I'm very curious as to what the thought process is, here.
posted by Mizu at 6:32 PM on December 29, 2010
posted by Mizu at 6:32 PM on December 29, 2010
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posted by special-k at 6:35 PM on December 29, 2010 [36 favorites] Let's just al settle down and have some mushrooms and talk about this
posted by The Whelk at 6:40 PM on December 29, 2010 [4 favorites]
posted by The Whelk at 6:40 PM on December 29, 2010 [4 favorites]
I think the issue is they want to link to "profiles" so it's a matter of "this is me on this other site" instead of being dropped right in the midst of a blog?
I don't know. I like the idea that if there is a way to make a unique identifier then you can link to it.
I also just link to whatever I like in my profile. The nofollow thing is a bit silly as is the no indexing, but I don't much care.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:52 PM on December 29, 2010
I don't know. I like the idea that if there is a way to make a unique identifier then you can link to it.
I also just link to whatever I like in my profile. The nofollow thing is a bit silly as is the no indexing, but I don't much care.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:52 PM on December 29, 2010
I think the thought process is, that with the exception of Twitter [which has a special role on profile pages], we really want to be able to link to people's profiles on other sites. Tumblr and Posterous don't really do that. If there's a way to link up with you on a site, great. If it's just "hey read my blog" less great. We want this to be a way that MeFites who share interest areas can find other MeFites on social sites.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:52 PM on December 29, 2010
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:52 PM on December 29, 2010
Yeah, as jessamyn said, if Tumblr had a profile page for each member that was basically "hey, here are this user's tumblr blogs they have created" it would be a perfect social software profile like the others. Instead, Tumblr just considers your first created blog as your pseudo profile and that's not exactly what we were shooting for with those listings.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:06 PM on December 29, 2010
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:06 PM on December 29, 2010
Thanks for clarifying, guys. I don't quite get the distinction, but no matter. I'll just go rejigger my profile and stop using the Social Apps list like I've been doing.
posted by Mizu at 7:26 PM on December 29, 2010
posted by Mizu at 7:26 PM on December 29, 2010
We're not going to add Posterous for the same reason we won't add Blogger, Tumblr, etc. These link directly to content instead of a summary of contributions.
Er, what now? Blogger has a public profile option that links to a summary of a user's blogs, their email/gender/etc if publicly identified, join date, that kind of thing. There's a checkbox to share your profile in the Dashboard section (so, it is opt-in). It's even a unique URL: http://www.blogger.com/profile/[user numberish thing]. It does not appear that you have to be logged in to view the profile (tested it on another browser).
In short, near as I can tell (and I did just double check), Blogger offers the option of having a normal social media profile these days.
posted by librarylis at 8:10 PM on December 29, 2010
Er, what now? Blogger has a public profile option that links to a summary of a user's blogs, their email/gender/etc if publicly identified, join date, that kind of thing. There's a checkbox to share your profile in the Dashboard section (so, it is opt-in). It's even a unique URL: http://www.blogger.com/profile/[user numberish thing]. It does not appear that you have to be logged in to view the profile (tested it on another browser).
In short, near as I can tell (and I did just double check), Blogger offers the option of having a normal social media profile these days.
posted by librarylis at 8:10 PM on December 29, 2010
Yeah, Blogger has a profile page.
I agree that without a central profile page, having a tumblr link wouldn't be much help for those of us who have like SEVEN tumblr blogs to manage.
posted by hermitosis at 9:00 PM on December 29, 2010 [1 favorite]
I agree that without a central profile page, having a tumblr link wouldn't be much help for those of us who have like SEVEN tumblr blogs to manage.
posted by hermitosis at 9:00 PM on December 29, 2010 [1 favorite]
Any site that has a [user numberish thing] is kind of a challenge because no one knows what that number is. We offer help for some of these sites in the FAQ entry for social apps and we could do the same for Blogger profiles if people want to add those. Profiles are a minor part of Blogger and I'm not sure everyone knows they exist. Some of the default templates don't even link the blog to a user profile. So if we add Blogger, a lot of people will have a "huh?" moment when they expect to put their Blog*Spot URL in instead of a cryptic user number.
I completely understand the confusion. When people think of Blogger they think of their weblog as their public face to the world. But a weblog can have many authors. A weblog is a flow that you're dumped into the middle of without much context. A profile is a page about one person. It has a defined structure that will be the same for each person on that particular service. That's what we're trying to connect with these particular links—other pages like the one you're looking at.
We have the "website" link that is even more prominent on the profile page than these social services links that can serve as your home page. If that's your Blogger, Tumblr, or Posterous weblog that's fine. There's no restriction whatsoever, and people expect that link to have some personal element to it. If it happens to be a page full of animated cats, that's great. But we want the social links to be more structured so that if people click them there's some expectation of what they'll get: a page very similar to the one they're looking at on a different site. And if they're a member too they can friend/contact/like/poke or whatever you do there.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:45 PM on December 29, 2010
I completely understand the confusion. When people think of Blogger they think of their weblog as their public face to the world. But a weblog can have many authors. A weblog is a flow that you're dumped into the middle of without much context. A profile is a page about one person. It has a defined structure that will be the same for each person on that particular service. That's what we're trying to connect with these particular links—other pages like the one you're looking at.
We have the "website" link that is even more prominent on the profile page than these social services links that can serve as your home page. If that's your Blogger, Tumblr, or Posterous weblog that's fine. There's no restriction whatsoever, and people expect that link to have some personal element to it. If it happens to be a page full of animated cats, that's great. But we want the social links to be more structured so that if people click them there's some expectation of what they'll get: a page very similar to the one they're looking at on a different site. And if they're a member too they can friend/contact/like/poke or whatever you do there.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:45 PM on December 29, 2010
I think the thought process is, that with the exception of Twitter [which has a special role on profile pages], we really want to be able to link to people's profiles on other sites. Tumblr and Posterous don't really do that. If there's a way to link up with you on a site, great. If it's just "hey read my blog" less great. We want this to be a way that MeFites who share interest areas can find other MeFites on social sites.
Tumblr is totally a social site. The whole thing is designed around following people. It seems like you haven't used it before. Blogger also lets you add people.
I don't understand what the problem is with going to a personal site that shows new content. As noted, you're allowed to link your Twitter. You're also allowed to link Delicious and Pinboard.
posted by John Cohen at 5:03 AM on December 30, 2010 [2 favorites]
Tumblr is totally a social site. The whole thing is designed around following people. It seems like you haven't used it before. Blogger also lets you add people.
I don't understand what the problem is with going to a personal site that shows new content. As noted, you're allowed to link your Twitter. You're also allowed to link Delicious and Pinboard.
posted by John Cohen at 5:03 AM on December 30, 2010 [2 favorites]
The whole thing is designed around following people. It seems like you haven't used it before.
Show me where your Tumblr profile is and we make a way for you link to it on the social sites list. Here is my Tumblr.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:25 AM on December 30, 2010 [1 favorite]
Show me where your Tumblr profile is and we make a way for you link to it on the social sites list. Here is my Tumblr.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:25 AM on December 30, 2010 [1 favorite]
Whatever the reasoning was, I want to be able to find and follow people that I find interesting on MeFi in other places where they express themselves.
Since whether I follow them on Tumblr, Twitter, Pinboard or anywhere else is entirely up to me, I don't see any reason to make that hard to do.
posted by philipy at 9:28 AM on December 31, 2010
Since whether I follow them on Tumblr, Twitter, Pinboard or anywhere else is entirely up to me, I don't see any reason to make that hard to do.
posted by philipy at 9:28 AM on December 31, 2010
We're not making it hard to do. We are making it easier for a certain subset of sites, but we're not making it harder for all others that don't happen to fall within that set.
MetaFilter members express themselves on thousands of other sites, and we can't support a system that makes it easy to find everyone everywhere. At some point we have to draw lines based on rules and there will always be frustrations where the lines are.
People can add as many links as they want to their profile page. We don't limit that in any way. People can tell us about their offline activities at IRL. They can tell us about things they created at Projects. We really are trying to connect members with members in various ways. The "Also On" links are just one small piece.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:39 AM on December 31, 2010
MetaFilter members express themselves on thousands of other sites, and we can't support a system that makes it easy to find everyone everywhere. At some point we have to draw lines based on rules and there will always be frustrations where the lines are.
People can add as many links as they want to their profile page. We don't limit that in any way. People can tell us about their offline activities at IRL. They can tell us about things they created at Projects. We really are trying to connect members with members in various ways. The "Also On" links are just one small piece.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:39 AM on December 31, 2010
MetaFilter members express themselves on thousands of other sites, and we can't support a system that makes it easy to find everyone everywhere.
This is true, and it's great that there's a social explorer at all.
Given that there is one, and you're making it easy to find people on some sites, the logical criterion for picking those sites would seem to be the sites that the most people use.
A criterion like "site has a personal profile page" is not that relevant, since I'm a lot more interested in seeing what kind of things people post before deciding to follow them than what (if anything) they wrote in their profile.
I do that on MeFi too. Profiles are slightly helpful here, but it's people's activity that makes them interesting to keep track of or not.
posted by philipy at 9:11 AM on January 3, 2011
This is true, and it's great that there's a social explorer at all.
Given that there is one, and you're making it easy to find people on some sites, the logical criterion for picking those sites would seem to be the sites that the most people use.
A criterion like "site has a personal profile page" is not that relevant, since I'm a lot more interested in seeing what kind of things people post before deciding to follow them than what (if anything) they wrote in their profile.
I do that on MeFi too. Profiles are slightly helpful here, but it's people's activity that makes them interesting to keep track of or not.
posted by philipy at 9:11 AM on January 3, 2011
I'm a lot more interested in seeing what kind of things people post before deciding to follow them than what (if anything) they wrote in their profile.
I feel like we're in agree-to-disagree land now here. If you have seven tumblrblogs, there is no easy way to show all of your contributions to them in one place. The idea of social sites is not necessarily to highlight things a user does elsewhere, it's to show people who may be using social sites elsewhere how they can find MeFites to link up with. It's a fine-grained distinction, but it's an important one.
it's people's activity that makes them interesting to keep track of or not
The only way you can tell what a person's activity is on MeFi is by following links from their profile page [or just reading along until you see them]. This is what we're going after with the Also On feature.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 9:17 AM on January 3, 2011
I feel like we're in agree-to-disagree land now here. If you have seven tumblrblogs, there is no easy way to show all of your contributions to them in one place. The idea of social sites is not necessarily to highlight things a user does elsewhere, it's to show people who may be using social sites elsewhere how they can find MeFites to link up with. It's a fine-grained distinction, but it's an important one.
it's people's activity that makes them interesting to keep track of or not
The only way you can tell what a person's activity is on MeFi is by following links from their profile page [or just reading along until you see them]. This is what we're going after with the Also On feature.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 9:17 AM on January 3, 2011
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We're not going to add Posterous for the same reason we won't add Blogger, Tumblr, etc. These link directly to content instead of a summary of contributions. It's an arbitrary decision, and there are some exceptions that have been grandfathered into our list such as Twitter, but we don't want to link directly to content from these Social Service links.
posted by special-k at 6:23 PM on December 29, 2010