Tumblr has expanded its feature set once more, providing a page that presents some basic statistics about your tumblog. When I first looked at it, I didn’t find it at all informative, and it is still rather vague. I noticed it while writing Friday’s post, at which point my “toblarity” was 9. The thing is, it gives no indication what that number represents. 9 out of what? Is a lower number better, or a higher number?
The first time I viewed the page, I was confronted with the following.
Well, I guess I’m just a LOSER! Just to the right of that, it placed me in a list labeled “United States” with a number beside it that was a good bit less than 50,000. So, I was completely confused.
As I look at it again tonight, my tumblarity has increased to 14, and I’m listed in what is now labeled “Top Blogs”. So, I am now able to deduce that a higher number is better. I am also assuming that Top Blogs represents all tumblogs in the world, as opposed to those in the United States.
The design of this information display leaves much to be desired. It should not take multiple viewings to understand the data being displayed, and I still have no idea how high tumblarity can go. The statistics really only serve purposes of vanity, rather than being at all useful. Personally, I’d be happier with a feature that exposes the tags I’ve been putting on my posts to my readers.
Jack, you can actually chose different layouts which expose or don’t expose the tags, depending on what you prefer. If you visit my tumblr, you’ll see each post has the tags listed, but you’re right, they’re not viewable on the dashboard.
