A call to the Tumblr team

This is an open comment to Tumblr dev/community staff - and I’m posting this on my Tumblr blog too.

I understand that you guys are hugely busy, and that in the grand scheme of things API support for community programmers is hardly a priority. We’re all devs here, I don’t think anyone expects constant interaction.

But despite that, the release of the new API has been met with a real lack of support. Especially when it was a significant departure from V1.

Initially Derek was active on the forum and it felt like there was a regular presence listening at least - but that has waned and now we’re stuck bumping our own posts hoping for any response.

I’m not suggesting we have dedicated resource - but an acknowledgement of our issue shouldn’t be too much to ask after 3 or 4 days should it? Some idea of whether it may or may not be looked at after a week? Use of a defect list rather than a haphazard forum? Some idea of what we need to post to be able to be given the help we need?

I have an email at the moment from the Tumblr Product Team, asking if they can be informed of the next release of my app as they want to see if they can show what the community can do with Tumblr, especially showing off the new photo set functionality. I was so pleased they were interested, and worked incredibly hard to get the app finished.

I find it so disappointing that I’m now crafting an email, weeks later,  telling them the new API is fantastic, the new features are exactly what I wished for….but that a lack of communication with the team running it means I’m going to have to take my app offline indefinitely because I won’t release it without the pieces I’m missing, specifically the pieces they were interested in seeing - that even with detailed information about my apps interaction I can’t even get a reply saying “yes, we’ve seen your posts, we’re swamped - but we’ll try and get someone to look at it soon” - and quite frankly, if I were a user of my app, I’d be angry at how long I’ve waited for the next release.

I don’t want promises, I don’t want to be pushy or agressive. I just wish I didn’t feel so let down when the API has come so far so quickly. I may not know your architecture internally - but there are several posts asking how to post a photo, my own personal issue I grant you, and we get the same recycled Python script. How does this help an Objective C specialist? A php programmer? A C# coder? Not once has someone on Tumblr said “here’s an example of the request body that we send to the API and it works, make your language send this and it will work too”.

I love Tumblr, I think the API is awesome. But either support it or withdraw it.

Steven Pears (Author of DashBuddy on the WP7 Marketplace)