The Long Tail: Tumblr and Open Broadcaster Software

Fomo fear of missing out concept
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The Long Tail and Social Media

The idea behind the Long Tail is the collection of a vast amount of digital content, not just the popular ones, but the obscure. That collection can then be used to accrue customers and visitors over time. Massive databases, a technology designed to hold large sets of data, make this possible by bringing the cost of storing content down to a point where all of it provides value, even the ones that do not generate thousands of visitor interactions every day. Social media platforms are the veritable embodiment of this concept. Each of these platforms operates off of vast database type structures, all holding user generated content in the form of posts, blogs, images, profiles, videos, music, text, practically anything. Social media companies benefit from users interacting with their platform, when they put up posts, view ads, and collect their data. To push users to engage, features to connect users with each other through forums or to direct users to more content they will likely interact with are implemented. This creates a feedback loop of users constantly creating more content and browsing for just as much, strange, and sometimes obscure content, a genuine Long Tail.

Tumblr

Tumblr is a social media platform dating back to 2007. It operates off blogs, with users creating their own and finding other user blogs or blogs called communities that work off a theme (writing, anime, art, etcetera). The method for resharing content is called reblogging, but retains the post's original comments. 

Tumblr has most of the hallmarks of a typical social media platform, including tags, post searching, user unique pages, and forums, but they definitely have some features that set it apart. For one, Tumblr allows their users a lot of blog customization with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (the three languages of the web), meaning dedicated users can put in custom functionality and themes in their blogs. Tumblr is also nowhere near as big on follow counts or as engagement driven as platforms like TikTok, which allows their users a pressure-free space without the push to go viral. Posts are also standouts for typical social media platforms because of their multimedia nature. Images, text, links, audio, quotes, video, and chat conversations are all allowed formats.

Tumblr is a classic Long Tail styled social media platform, particularly because of its culture. It thrives off niche communities and topics, pushing users to these groups and encouraging them to make their own communities. No content is useless or unorganized. There is a place for most everything on Tumblr.

Open Broadcaster Software

With social media comes streaming and recording needs. Open Broadcaster Software (OBS Studio) is an advanced free and open source software (FOSS) designed for streaming and recording video and audio. It offers wide compatibility with multiple platforms including YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook, as well as the Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems. The app supports many external plugins and third-party scripts (computer programs) that enhance functionality. In addition, OBS Studio has very advanced streaming and recording features like high resolution streaming and customizable scenes that can pull from a variety of source material including game captures, webcam footage, text, and images. 

The applications unfortunately has terribly underdeveloped accessibility features. There are no built-in screen reader type features, text and icons are small and not resizable, there is no mobile app, and touchscreen movements are not well developed. Though, there is an accessibility tab in settings with some customizable element colors, so improvements might be eventually released.

OBS Studio suffers from relatively high technical skill prerequisites to using the application, or a time commitment to research how to use it. The user interface (UI, the part of the application users interact with) is very complicated and almost entirely customizable in settings or with click and drag features. Combine that with software developer style customer support (Discord and forums) and you have a software application that takes either tech savvy users or managers to make this work for anything more complicated than a simple screencast. 

I made a screencast presentation on Tumblr using OBS Studio. You can watch that here: Tumblr Presentation. To make the actual screencast, I first downloaded the software from their website for my operating system. After making it through the standard setup process, I opened the application and poked around the settings and the default UI. I recorded a screencast with my microphone audio and the OBS Studio window made invisible on the recording (that's in settings). I felt the process was pretty smooth. It took multiple tries to get my audio and screen configured in a way that I was happy with the recording, but I felt the it was not too different from the setup of some coding platforms I have used in the past. I would rate OBS Studio as bad for people who just want to record video to share with their friends who also lack any technical knowledge, good for simple screencasts for users with some experience working with technical applications, and great for professional and dedicated streamers. Bear in mind that this is only if they do not need accessibility features.

Conclusion

Social media represents a change in the meaning of popular content. Algorithms drive users to what it thinks will generate engagement, not necessarily what's popular. Platforms like Tumblr embrace the inherent value in the niche and obscure content, perpetuating the idea of a real Long Tail: more is better. Social media is ubiquitous in today's society. Knowing what drives the user-data eating content behemoths sounds like good practice.

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