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How Notes Work on Tumblr
Aug. 16th, 2016 09:41 amYesterday afternoon I got an ask on Tumblr in response to a post I made claiming that it was silly for people to attack my fandom, as most people who post work on the tag don't get that many notes in the first place. The person who sent the ask wanted to know why that is. I now strongly suspect it was a troll ask, so I deleted my response (and the original post that triggered it), but I thought it might be worth putting up here. The caveat, which I had included in the tags, is that my answer reflects my own experiences, and I'm sure that other people have had other experiences. Fandom is huge, after all. Still, I've been on Tumblr since 2011, and this is the theory I've developed on how notes work.
Every blog on Tumblr has what I call a "reblog coefficient," which indicates how many notes someone's reblog of a post will generate. If your blog has a reblog coefficient of ten, this means that at least ten of your followers will like and/or reblog any given post from you.
I call the blogs with the highest reblog coefficients "anchor blogs," as they serve as anchors for a fandom. Even when XKit is used properly, it can be difficult to catch everything that comes along in the rapid flow of the Tumblr feed stream, so people attached to a certain fandom will often visit one or two anchor blogs to check for new content, which they will like or reblog directly from that blog.
Tumblr has a category of communities that we can think of as "legacy fandoms," by which I mean fandoms that have inherited a large number of fans from fic-centric fandom communities on Livejournal. To give a concrete example, Hannibal is a legacy fandom of Sherlock, which is itself a transitional legacy fandom of Harry Potter. In the larger legacy fandoms, it's common for fanfic authors to have anchor blogs. Because the essentially visual nature of Tumblr as a platform can undermine the circulation of text posts even within legacy fandoms, however, sometimes fanfic writers will work together to create and co-moderate anchor blogs that are separate from their main blogs.
In video game fandoms on Tumblr, however, the anchor blogs tend to be the blogs of popular artists. An artist's work will generate its own fandom, which will help to propel the broader fandom forward. Perhaps because they themselves are visually oriented, these artists tend to only reblog art. In addition, there are typically several large anchor blogs within any given video game fandom that will reblog anything posted with a certain tag or set of tags, but they also tend to reblog art exclusively.
What this means is that, within video game fandoms, it's rare for a fic post to get more than thirty to forty notes, even if the author's blog is fairly popular. There are exceptions, of course, but they're generally tied to a collaboration between a writer and an artist. This is true for the Zelda fandom, and it’s been true for other game fandoms I've followed during the past five years as well.
That being said, it's entirely possible for someone who isn't an artist (or any other sort of BNF) to have what I call a "bedrock blog," which is a blog that one or more of the anchor blogs follow. Even if a bedrock blog only has a base reblog coefficient of ten, their practical reblog coefficient can be exponentially larger because of their association with an anchor blog. I've noticed a number of commonalities between bedrock blogs, but the one factor that stands out to me is that the people who run them tend to be extroverted and extremely active.
In the end, though, Tumblr is not organic chemistry, and nobody is on the site to try to cure cancer. I think its most important function is to allow people to express themselves while discovering new things. Everybody uses Tumblr in their own way, and notes don't always necessarily have anything to do with any given person's enjoyment of their experience.
Every blog on Tumblr has what I call a "reblog coefficient," which indicates how many notes someone's reblog of a post will generate. If your blog has a reblog coefficient of ten, this means that at least ten of your followers will like and/or reblog any given post from you.
I call the blogs with the highest reblog coefficients "anchor blogs," as they serve as anchors for a fandom. Even when XKit is used properly, it can be difficult to catch everything that comes along in the rapid flow of the Tumblr feed stream, so people attached to a certain fandom will often visit one or two anchor blogs to check for new content, which they will like or reblog directly from that blog.
Tumblr has a category of communities that we can think of as "legacy fandoms," by which I mean fandoms that have inherited a large number of fans from fic-centric fandom communities on Livejournal. To give a concrete example, Hannibal is a legacy fandom of Sherlock, which is itself a transitional legacy fandom of Harry Potter. In the larger legacy fandoms, it's common for fanfic authors to have anchor blogs. Because the essentially visual nature of Tumblr as a platform can undermine the circulation of text posts even within legacy fandoms, however, sometimes fanfic writers will work together to create and co-moderate anchor blogs that are separate from their main blogs.
In video game fandoms on Tumblr, however, the anchor blogs tend to be the blogs of popular artists. An artist's work will generate its own fandom, which will help to propel the broader fandom forward. Perhaps because they themselves are visually oriented, these artists tend to only reblog art. In addition, there are typically several large anchor blogs within any given video game fandom that will reblog anything posted with a certain tag or set of tags, but they also tend to reblog art exclusively.
What this means is that, within video game fandoms, it's rare for a fic post to get more than thirty to forty notes, even if the author's blog is fairly popular. There are exceptions, of course, but they're generally tied to a collaboration between a writer and an artist. This is true for the Zelda fandom, and it’s been true for other game fandoms I've followed during the past five years as well.
That being said, it's entirely possible for someone who isn't an artist (or any other sort of BNF) to have what I call a "bedrock blog," which is a blog that one or more of the anchor blogs follow. Even if a bedrock blog only has a base reblog coefficient of ten, their practical reblog coefficient can be exponentially larger because of their association with an anchor blog. I've noticed a number of commonalities between bedrock blogs, but the one factor that stands out to me is that the people who run them tend to be extroverted and extremely active.
In the end, though, Tumblr is not organic chemistry, and nobody is on the site to try to cure cancer. I think its most important function is to allow people to express themselves while discovering new things. Everybody uses Tumblr in their own way, and notes don't always necessarily have anything to do with any given person's enjoyment of their experience.
