shortformblog

Mention in this BuzzFeed piece about the plight of the developer of Tumby:

Twitter’s maturation came and went, and it’s hard to find people still angry about it; resignation, or begrudging understanding, are more common emotions. But currently, Tumblr developers are going through a similar experience. The company, from their perspective, is piggybacking on their work and then shutting them out. Last month, one user by the name of Unwrapping Tumblr noted that a design change to the avatar menu on Tumblr’s dashboard bore more than a casual resemblance to another third-party developer’s tool called Tumby: “You know, not to raise any concerns, but this looks an awful lot like what Tumby’s Chrome extension does.” To which another popular Tumblr user sarcastically replied, “Tumblr lifting features from a ‘browser hack’? No. Say it ain’t so! I don’t believe it!”

Tumby founder Robert Buckley notes that despite attempts, no substantive relationship has evolved between the two companies. “We never needed any technical help to build our stuff, so no harm there. On the other hand, Tumblr’s business side has been uninterested with what we’re doing. That’s surprising and disappointing,” he said. “Worse, they’ve either ignored or rebuffed our every attempt to reach out and establish a dialogue intended to explore and form the right kind of mutually beneficial relationship. We’ve acquired lots of valuable Tumblr domain expertise and insight that we want to and we’d be delighted to share — no takers at Tumblr. That indifference means missed opportunity that harms us and harms them.”

Social networks should be more accepting of third-party plugins.

tumbyland

Here’s tumbyHover in action providing some context to the BuzzFeed article itself.



You can get the tumbyHover Chrome Extension here.