Pillowfort as a Blogging Option
I’ve been hearing good things about Pillowfort, so I’m beginning to seriously consider it as my new home. Here are my thoughts about it.
Pros:
1) It’s being developed a self-conscious alternative to Tumblr and the problems Tumblr has had for a long time. That means they already appreciate the stuff that bugs us about Tumblr.
2) It should allow bloggers to do all the things we already do here on Tumblr–post pics, short and long-form writing, reblogging of other’s material, and so on. It also is designed to give users more control over who can see their posts (therefore making it easy to manage problem followers, stop bots, build communities of like-minded people, and so on. For example, if you delete a post, all the reblogs of it get deleted too. That makes it harder for your content to accidentally escape into the wild.
3) They have explicitly said they intend to all most NSFW content. They haven’t specified what isn’t allowed yet, but my guess is they are referring to illegal things like child porn and revenge porn.
4) They say that they want to avoid corporate involvement and intrusive ads. That right there boosts it several points in my estimate.
5) The Kickstarter has been fully funded.
Cons:
1) The big one: it’s still in beta-testing. It’s been in beta-testing for three years, which hopefully means they’ve worked out most of the bugs. But they did just have to shut down for several days because of a major security problem they found. They say they’ll be up by Wed (possibly today). But it’s not clear that they will be ready when the axe comes down on Tumblr.
2) At the moment you need to pay $5 to get an account. They say that’s just for the purposes of getting set up and sufficiently funded. They intend to role out a premium option at some point in the future but say that the basic service will be free to us. Assuming they do as they say, that’s not too bad. I don’t like subscription-based apps, but you get what you pay for, and Tumblr is proving that especially well right now.
3) I haven’t yet gotten a close look at how the interface works, so I don’t know if I’ll actually like it. I don’t like advocating for something essentially unknown, but people who have seen how it works seem to really like it. Thus far, however, they don’t seem to be accepting new subscribers (see Con 1). If I can get on it, I’ll report back.
4) They’ve said they’re not sure their servers can handle a huge influx of new users yet. That’s a bit worrisome.
5) No app yet. They’re focusing on just getting fully up and running, which is a good thing, but it does mean it will be a bit awkward to use on cell phones for a while. But given that Apple is hostile to NSFW material, would Apple even allow a Pillowfort app? No idea.
What about other platforms? Here are my thoughts:
1) Fetlife: It’s great for community discussion, but it’s not set up for sharing pics or for blogging. There’s no way to reblog, for example. So it’s a great resource for finding people to ask questions of, but that’s about it.
2) Twitter: You can’t post NSFW content on Twitter. If you’re a SFW blogger, it might be enough, especially if you don’t make comments longer than 240 characters. But NSFW cannot operate on Twitter, so the NSFW community cannot go there, meaning that your potential audience is going to be smaller. Also, Twitter is notoriously bad about dealing with harassment, and that’s a major issue for a lot of NSFW bloggers, especially women and trans people. In my opinion, the only thing Twitter has to offer NSFW bloggers is a way to tell people where to find their blog.
3) Instagram: Same as Twitter, except that their management isn’t as notoriously shitty as Twitter.
4) Soup.io: Ugly, ugly platform. Looks like it got released before it had any beta testing. I just can’t see people wanting to spend time there.
5) Wordpress: It’s great for blogging, and you can post pictures to your heart’s delight. But you can’t reblog others’ material, so it’s much less community oriented. Also, I have no idea how they would react to a sudden influx of NSFW bloggers. They might decide to crack down.
6) Typepad; Great for blogging. But no continuous feed that I can see.
7) Jux: It’s gone. Closed permanently.
8) Recon: Great app. If you’re gay and kinky, you SHOULD have a profile on Recon. But it’s not a blogging platform at all. (Incidentally, I’m Sebastianb on Recon.)
So at the moment, I’m beginning to put some of my eggs in the Pillowfort basket. But it’s not actually available yet. Here’s a link to their FAQ.
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