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Unwrapping Tumblr

@unwrapping / unwrapping.tumblr.com

A Tumblr about Tumblr, by Mykl Novak. Unofficial — I'm not Tumblr staff.
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Reblogged

Tuesday, April 8th, 2025

🌟 New

  • Activity on the web now clearly states when there is nothing to show for a specific tab.

🛠 Fixed

  • Screen readers no longer read out each individual badge.

🚧 Ongoing

  • We are aware that iOS private posts are missing the Edit Post option in the meatballs menu and working on a fix. In the meantime, these can be edited from the web.

🌱 Upcoming

  • No upcoming launches to announce today.

Experiencing an issue? Check for Known Issues and file a Support Request if you have something new. We’ll get back to you as soon as we can!

Want to share your feedback about something? Check out our Work in Progress blog and start a discussion with other users.

Wanna support Tumblr directly with some money? Check out Premium and the Supporter badge in TumblrMart!

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Reblogged

Beware the Ides of March on Tumblr - you may see many, many memes. Cher and Lauren discuss the particular fervor of the holiday this year and wonder what kinds of weapons the senators used. Plus, Cher watches exclusively medical shows and Lauren puts on the clown makeup for 911.

Credits and transcript in our reblog. You can find transcripts for this, and every other episode, here.

Find the posts discussed in this episode in this tag!

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Reblogged

So sorry to hear about the layoffs at Tumblr. I find it hard to believe that this place will survive without people like cyle advocating for it, but I remain hopeful.

To my ex-coleagues affected: take time to grieve. I know how it feels to not be able to say goodbye, but know that even though things feel dark right now, this is the beginning of something great for you.

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Reblogged

That a major social media platform that's been around for two decades going down without proper archiving would represent a greater loss of human culture than any library that's ever burned is undeniably true, but it's also a very funny observation to make about Tumblr in particular.

tumblr has been brute-force archived by archive.org so many times, i really cannot believe there aren't a thousand complete copies of the whole site scattered around already.

library of alexandia can't say the same. imagine if anybody had tried to mob-rush the doors of that library to brute-force-copy its contents before it burned to the ground.

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Reblogged

Tuesday, April 1st, 2025

🌟 New

  • We have refined post headers and footers in the iOS app. On the web, only the headers have been refined so far, with footer changes on the way. And, in the Android app, both changes are still on the way.
  • To reduce tech debt, we made the difficult decision to remove the fast queue feature. We know this was beloved by a small cohort of active users, but usage is too low for us to justify continued development. To be clear: queuing still exists and will be maintained; this only affects the fast queue feature.
  • We have revamped the filters of the Activity column in Patio to help you stay on top of what matters to you.

🛠 Fixed

  • We fixed an issue where the “not interested” items under a post’s meatballs menu might not have been working for some folks.
  • We fixed an issue that prevented joining a community via an invite link.
  • We fixed a missing background when Activity is loaded as a column in Patio.

🚧 Ongoing

  • No ongoing incidents to speak of right now.

🌱 Upcoming

  • No upcoming launches to announce today.

Experiencing an issue? Check for Known Issues and file a Support Request if you have something new. We’ll get back to you as soon as we can!

Want to share your feedback about something? Check out our Work in Progress blog and start a discussion with other users.

Wanna support Tumblr directly with some money? Check out Premium and the Supporter badge in TumblrMart!

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Reblogged

in loving memory of tumblr's april fools' pranks 💐 2014 - 2024

icymi, tumblr used to do an elaborate april fool's prank every year, but this year they suddenly stopped. here's a somewhat detailed recap of everything they did over the decade:

2013 - mishapocalypse (honourable mention): tumblr staff didn’t start doing april fools until 2014, but the mishapocalypse happened on tumblr in 2013 and i feel like this list would be incomplete without it

2014 - tumblrpro: upon opening your dash you were greeted by an “inspirational” video, that ended with the option to get “tumblrpro (for free)”. all it did was put a top hat on your icon.

2015 - tumblr executivesuite/coppy: a copying machine appeared in the corner of your dash. it would offer tips on how to use tumblr, like clippy the paperclip used to do in microsoft word. as the day went on, it slowly broke down and died right in front of your eyes. many people hated him (but not me). you could also make a (small) spreadsheet. @executivesuite2016 is the official blog.

2016 - this is decision/lizard election/tumblrdecides: a parody of the 2016 US elections. there were 4 lizards (well, one of them turned out to be a salamander in a scandal) to vote for. the dash looked different and there was a live news report with election updates, as well as an election blog for each lizard. they all had their own slogans and you would get an "i voted" button after you voted that would get slapped next to your icon. there were built-in functions to make an election poster for your favourite lizard and to create a text post that supported your lizard of choice that autogenerated a statement for all your followers to read. imo tumblr’s april fools peak. @thisisdecision2016-blog is the official blog, @mop-2016-blog @wretchedtooth @timefordeborah-blog were candidates. rick also had a blog (rick-official) but that now seems to have vanished because he ended up dropping out of the election. mop won, if you're curious. by far the most elaborate prank tumblr ever did.

2017 - horse friend: a tamagotchi-inspired game where you had to take care of a little horse in the corner of your screen. it came with a randomly generated name, and you had to feed and clean up after it. if you didnt take good care of it, it died. you could then hatch (yes, hatch) a new one. there was also an option to look at the names of all your dead horses. this is now available to buy in the tumblr shop. @horse-friends is the official blog.

2018 - tumblcoin: a parody of cryptocurrency (this was the year bitcoin took off). you could ‘invest’ in tumblcoin, with which you could in turn buy things with to spice up your dash, including last year’s horse friend, coppy from 2015, and a frame for around your icon. you could share the amount of tumblcoin you owned in an automatically generated gif post which would be tagged #tbc2018 and #tumblcoin. @tumblcoin is the official blog.

2019 - @memories: this blog still functions the way it did on april fools itself! it's like mad libs, where it takes post templates and then adds in tags you use a lot and users you frequently interact with on your main blog. like a personalized shitpost bot.

2020 - group chat prank/@storybot: it was so hard to find info on this because it was contained entirely in the now-defunct group chat function, which no one used. i had to go through the notes of this post for information because no one cared enough to actually write anything explaining it. turns out, you could write a story with your mutuals by adding storybot to your group chat. it also kept working after april fools (well, up until the group chats were deleted) just like memories. many people missed out on it entirely because they did not use the group chat function.

2021 - tumblcryptids: tumblr allowed you to adopt “non-fungible tumblcryptids”, a parody of NFTs. clicking a button that said "Summon thy Tumblrcryptid" would spawn an image of a little blob-shaped creature with a short description, which would always read "Hi! My name is [randomly generated name]. I love [thing most people like]. I hate [thing most people dislike]. Like my parent, I can't get enough of #[tag from your main blog]." you could share them in a post, which would automatically add the tag #NFTumblcryptids to your post. and yes, people on the piss on the poor website freaked out about it because they thought they were real NFTs harming the environment. @tumblcryptidadoptioncenter is the official blog.

2022 - click-a-thon: when you clicked a light switch on your dashboard, a bunch of colourful things showed up, like a sponge you could move around, an "engagament meter", clickable buttons, and a “Summon Crab!” button, which would summon a crab when you clicked it. you could. the crabs, like horse friend, are still available in the tumblr store as of 2025. here's some screenshots. there were various ways to share your crab activities, which would all get tagged #april fools 2022. the prank was presented as a marketing technique created by Brick Whartley, a fictional businessman character created by tumblr, who (afaik) originated in a post on the official blog of the 2018 april fools prank, albeit originally in a different role. around this time he also started functioning as the mascot for tumblr's shop ( @emporium )

2023 - abstract reactions (emoji reacts): buttons were added to every post that allowed you to add emoji reactions, many of them based on tumblr inside jokes (horse as a reference to horse plinko/horse friend, vanilla for the vanilla extract meme, pikaman, bug for bug race, and brick whartley, who wasn't a meme but staff really wanted him to be). if one specific emoji was used a certain amount of times it would add an effect to the post, eg many cheese emoji reacts would cover the post in cheese. this was also attributed to Brick Whartley ("his" blog @brickwhartley also documented the day)

2024 - boop-o-meter: allowed you to “boop” other users who had opted in to the booping, like facebook’s poke feature back in the day. depending on how long you held the button, you would either boop, super boop, or evil boop. on the dashboard there was a counter for both how many times you had booped others and how many times others had booped you, as well as how many boops were given side-wide. when booping someone, an image of a cat paw appeared. you would get badges (which can still be used) for booping 1, 100 and 1000 times. if you got more than 999 boops, the counter would simply say “WOW”. this was brought back for halloween 2024 (as BOOp-o-meter. get it), with a ghost, skeleton and mummy paw. no official blog, but here's an official recap for april first from staff. i believe this was the only april fools prank that was mobile user friendly.

2025 - @fandom is running some polls, i guess

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Reblogged cyle

Is there any possibility for being able to add videos in reblogs as well as original posts?

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Answer: Hey, @littlemetalbiter!

Good question, and timely: this could certainly be fun, and video is something we are taking another look at right now. But while this is an idea that we’re interested in, we haven’t put it on the roadmap yet—we’re focusing on the fundamentals of video on Tumblr first, and this idea is not something we can talk about with any certainty.

You’ll get news and updates over at @changes as and when we’ve got ’em. Keep the questions coming!

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A lil hack:

  1. Upload the video to Tumblr in a new post, and save it as a draft
  2. Once the draft exists, right click the video in the draft and copy the video's URL
  3. Embed the URL as a video in your reblog
  4. Hit that reblog button
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Reblogged

Hi team! Hope you're well and having a great (start to the) week!

With the introduction of communities, can we also introduce a few new controls for them? Particularly blocking communities from showing at all, the same way we'd block users. I've been using Patio a lot (love it!) and have both my regular and 'For you' dashes showing, but the 'For you' dash keeps throwing communities at me that I really don't want to see. Clicking Not Interested does nothing and there's no other way to not see them - they keep appearing and it's been driving me buggy (help!).

Thanks all!

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Answer: Hello there @inclines!

As it happens, we answered something very similar to this very recently—we have recently added a new option to dismiss the Community from getting recommended on For You. If you want to know more, you can read all about it in Communities Feedback right here.

Thanks for the question! Keep them coming, folks.

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Reblogged

Tuesday, March 25th, 2025

🌟 New

  • On the web, we have revamped the filters on the Activity page to help you stay on top of what matters to you.
  • In the iOS app, you can now double-tap to Like videos and unmute them by hitting the volume up button.

🛠 Fixed

  • We identified an issue preventing password reset emails from being delivered to Yahoo, Hotmail/Outlook, and AOL/AIM email addresses. If you’re still not receiving password reset emails, please check your spam folder, and contact support if it’s not there either.
  • Adding tags should now be more intuitive in the Android app.
  • We also fixed a rare crash when adding photos in the iOS app. Please keep your apps up to date!

🚧 Ongoing

🌱 Upcoming

  • No upcoming launches to announce today.

Experiencing an issue? Check for Known Issues and file a Support Request if you have something new. We’ll get back to you as soon as we can!

Want to share your feedback about something? Check out our Work in Progress blog and start a discussion with other users.

Wanna support Tumblr directly with some money? Check out Premium and the Supporter badge in TumblrMart!

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Reblogged

hi wips! i noticed that the ask limit came back after not being there for a while (at least for me) and i was wondering why that was? i know that content creators like myself are often multifandom and love interacting with many different blogs and if too shy/uncomfortable using their blog, love the anon feature for that reason. i know that spam can be an issue, but is there anyway that we can get rid of the ask limit again or increase the amount of asks in the time limit and implement some kind of feature from the blogs end to limit asks they receive? i know it’s probably easier said than done, but i’ve seen bunch of mutuals/other blogs complain about ask limits so i thought i’d ask :’) have a nice day/night!

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Answer: Hello, @hykwrld-main!

Some context for you: we fixed the ask limit as asks were being abused by scammers, but it was never meant to be removed! So what we really mean to say here is: our bad. These things happen from time to time and we apologize for any inconvenience.

Thanks for raising this with us, but we would gently remind you here that in the future something like this is best reported to Support, so the right folks can look into it.

Have a great day! Keep the questions coming.

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