To comment, or not to comment
I’m finally ready to take a stand on the subject. Cue the music.
Tumblr should have comments.
I know what you’re going to say. It’ll be something along the lines of “that’s what Wordpress is for”, or “it goes against the core of what a tumblelog is”, or “you can add a third party commenting system” (yuck), etc. And you know what? You may be right. But here’s the thing, Tumblr is already different than a tumblelog. Tumblr has a sense of community. The basis behind following other tumblrs puts it in a class of its own. Why not embrace the difference?
Let me put this out there: I love the simplicity behind Tumblr. It feels like less of a commitment than a ‘real’ blog. It’s something I can make time to do, and I have fun doing it. And now I have people I know checking it out and I hear the same thing all the time, they all want to know why they can’t comment. Let’s face it, we’re living in the age of Facebook and Flickr. How many social sites do you know of that don’t let you comment? While Tumblr members might understand why there’s no comments, not everyone who stumbles on a Tumblr site does.
But none of that means Tumblr has to do comments like anyone else does them. I think there’s a way to make it more Tumblr-y. To comment on any site you have to be a member, right? So by default adding comments to Tumblr is going to add members because they would have to sign up. Bonus. What if a comment are treated like a new kind of post? If you navigate to a Tumblr page while you’re signed in and you want to comment on a post you get that little floating button (like reblog), except it would let you add a comment. On that user’s page it would fall under that post as a comment, but on your page it acts like a new kind of reblog post. It could tighten up the social aspect of Tumblr by helping Tumblrs become more aware of other members.
It’s just a thought, and while I’d love to hear what you think about it, you can’t leave a comment :)
