Through The Brier

Reblogging suggestions

I think reblogging is a great feature at Tumblr. I’ve been arguing for years that commments, trackbacks, etc. are largely unnecessary on a web where anyone can easily have their own site. The genesis of weblogging is in the reblog; the first weblogs were curated compendiums of links to other, interesting finds on the web.

The features at Tumblr surrounding reblogs add a lot of value to the concept. I’ve got a few ideas that I think would add more.

As it stands, when reblogging a text post, you can change it to a link or a quote. I’m not sure I understand the restriction. I’d like to be able to reblog any type of post and change it to any other. Often someone will quote an article and I want to reblog their post, but I’d rather it be a link to the article on my site. Or perhaps they’ve linked to something where I find a photo that I’d love to post as a reblog of their initial link.

I like the idea of reblogging because it preserves the chain of discovery and provides that chain in the dashboard, but I’d like to be free to reblog as any type of post I find appropriate.

I’d also like to see the ability to look at the reblog history of any post. I can see it in my dashboard, but I’d like to be able to see it even in the entries of people I don’t follow, and I’d like to show it to people visiting my site who may not be Tumblr subscribers.

There are some hacks around to make this happen, and people have noticed that David and Marco have it baked into their tumblelogs. I’m hoping that means there are template tags coming down the pipe that we can all include in our themes. I’d also like to see a bookmarklet, or a button on the Tumblr iFrame that would let me view the reblog history of a post whose author has chosen not to include it in the site (assuming that feature is coming).

Barring (or maybe even in addition to) the above suggestion, I’d like a way to follow the reblogs on a post over time in my dashboard. The way things are, to follow the reblogging on a post, you have to continuously search it out and find it in your dashboard. That becomes pretty difficult if you follow more than even a few people because the post you’re interested in is quickly buried in the previous dashboard pages.

It’d be nice to be able to favorite or star a post in your dashboard and have an easy way of filtering for those posts later. This would make following the reblog discussion of a post a lot easier, and regardless of that desire, I think it would be a convenient way to find your favorite Tumblr pearls later.

The way I deal with this now is to reblog the post into a private group of favorites. That way I can easily find it later. That’s serviceable, but better filtering in the dashboard would be a boon.

I’m sure none of this is new or shocking to the big brains. I bet they’ve got some, all, or even better things coming to us soon.