[kradeelav]

Anecdotal opinion ahead, but from someone who's been an avid user since 2010-12-ish (in a variety of scenes but mostly in illustration).

Personally, it's felt like a death of a thousand cuts. Tumblr was a gift to people who wanted one place to share "fandom" material whether it be fanart, fic, various graphics - basically a great place to land when livejournal/dreamwidth started going, and as someplace a little more personal and "warm" than twitter. There's been an ongoing harassment problem in recent years (similar to what twitter is facing) that didn't help, and tumblr's user base feels more anti-corp than most social media platforms, so the Yahoo buyout probably hurt it worse than usual. Pair that with the invasive advertisement "tweaks" (the algorithm-based feed was a nasty change for small creators like myself; it's not something that a third-party extension like xkit can get rid of easily) and the rise of alternatives like mastodon - and they've got a problem.

I still think tumblr has a lot of potential - it's still my favorite platform for the "fandom" scene and as an amazingly versatile platform for illustration/animation portfolios (ie a cleaner version of blogspot) - but I'm not optimistic these days.