Mlu - That's A Blog.

Every time I see a bunch of posts from Neil Gaiman on my feed I think, "Neil... you're procrastinating writing again, aren't you"

Introducing Tumblr Tips—supporting the creators you love, your way.

Ever wanted to leave a small tip on a post that made your day? Or a blog that always makes you laugh? Or celebrate one of your favorite creatives?

Well today, you’re in luck. Tumblr now has a tip jar.

This opt-in feature will allow you to gift a little something to support your favorite content creators. It’s a win-win: creatives can make a little money from their work, while supporters can tip posts they love in fun, playful ways. And it’s here after much popular demand.

So, how does it work?

It could not be simpler. Select the “Tip” tab on the post that you want to tip, then choose an amount. You can send a message with your gift, and see other users who have sent tips on the same post—unless you send a tip anonymously, like some sort of superhero. Once finished, take a moment to imagine creators basking in the warm glow of appreciation, or a tinkling sound as your gift lands in their jar.

Tumblr tip jar is available to all US users from today. Not in the US? No problem—it will be extended to all users soon. Tumblr will not receive any portion of these payments, though third-party payment services may charge a fee. Payment processing will go through Stripe. To find out everything you need to know about how to accept and receive tips, head over to Support, who will be happy to help.

What are you waiting for? Why not send some tipping love to your favorite blogs and creators? After all, you know what they say—get busy tippin’, or get busy tryin’.

Do You Love the Color of the Sun?

Get dazzled by the true spectrum of solar beauty. From fiery reds to cool blues, explore the vibrant hues of the Sun in a mesmerizing color order. The images used to make this gradient come from our Solar Dynamics Observatory. Taken in a variety of wavelengths, they give scientists a wealth of data about the Sun. Don't miss the total solar eclipse crossing North America on April 8, 2024. (It's the last one for 20 years!) Set a reminder to watch with us.

YouTube

2024 Total Solar Eclipse: Through the Eyes of NASA (Official Broadcast)

Watch live with us as a total solar eclipse moves across North America on April 8, 2024, traveling through Mexico, across the United States

Next Sunday that title is mine!

Our guild managed to get the Immortal last night! No one died even though things were getting pretty scary towards the end. @rangerzath got mind controlled toward the end on their DK... who almost murdered a few people and was subsequently almost murdered by our druids on accident as they tried to cyclone.

Felt like a long time coming!

Guys.... I just had a GREAT idea.

Mind the gap!

Hello again, Labs here with a recap of our test of Collections! We introduced this prototype back in September and then handed the feature to a handful of volunteers sourced from the notes on that post. Thank you again to all volunteers! 

We got so much useful feedback, and wanted to share some of that here, and reveal some next steps we’re taking. There are a couple of big projects cooking in Labs, and Collections has taken a backseat lately, but it is important to us to not leave y’all hanging. We very much want to build things with you here.

Our goal with the volunteer-based super-early phase of Collections was to see if those volunteers actually use the feature, watch what they come up with, and check whether anybody they invite to Tumblr signs up and becomes a regular user of the site. Turns out, nobody did sign up — it’s not as useful of an onboarding strategy as we thought it could be.

However, one piece of feedback we got is that Collections make great custom feeds, which people on Tumblr have been asking for a lot over the years. We hear you loud and clear: you want to supplement the standard Following / For You experience with more intentional control over feed content. That’s really important to us.

With that in mind, for those in the prototype, we’ve moved the Collections list to the left sidebar / mobile navigation as an expandable area like Account, for quick access. We like this better than putting them in the dashboard tab bar, but it’s still something we’re mulling over:

We also heard the need for more filtering options beyond just blogs and tags. What about only including a blog’s posts that use a certain tag, or excluding posts using a certain tag? Or list tags with a boolean AND operator (“posts tagged [tag] and [other tag]”), not just the OR operator we’re using now for sourcing tagged posts. Lots of ideas on how to further customize what shows up in the feed, and better define what the feed is “for”.

There were other fun, tangential bits of feedback, too, like the desire to make these Collections a collaborative feature, so that more than one person can help build a Collection. There were also several usability issues that came to the forefront, which we’ve addressed. And there were some well-articulated thoughts and questions about etiquette, such as how to seek a blog’s “permission” to be included in a Collection – that’s something we care a lot about, to help prevent this kind of feature from being a source of abuse.

Another piece of feedback we heard repeatedly is the desire for Collections of posts. This is not really what we intended with what we built, but it’s not too far afield either. We totally agree that having better, easier ways of collecting and curating individual posts would be useful, so we’re going to investigate that as a separate project.

With all of this in mind, we’ve split the work on Collections into two separate tracks:

Shaping this feature as a “customizable feeds” solution, away from an “invite others” tool.

Building a new thing for saving and curating static posts.

Stay tuned here on the Labs blog for updates on when/if we’ll be moving these Collections tracks of work to more people on Tumblr. (If you are one of the volunteers who helped us with Collections, you’ll still have access to it for the time being!)

Thanks for reading! And please reach out to us via Support, the replies here, or your reblogs, if you have any more feedback, as always.

40% Capitol

I'm feeling the same! Not sure if they can handle drawing avatars for the whole staff though, we're like at least 12 people!

not me changing the avatar again...