Despite Tumblr’s best efforts, Missing E, a set of enhancements to the Web community’s blogging tools, has survived to celebrate its first birthday.
The plugin’s developer, Jeremy Cutler, celebrated the milestone on its official blog:
“It seems like it has been much longer than just one year. Yet, that’s how long it’s been since I took a bunch of my little userscripts for Tumblr and rolled them into the single extension for Chrome and Safari (and a little later, Firefox) that has become so popular.”
For Cutler, it’s been a year of turmoil. While users love his product, Tumblr has made repeated efforts to block it. (Contrast that with Reddit’s eager support for extensions to the social news site.)
To users, the Tumblr-enhancing browser plugin is a godsend. Missing E takes its name from the fact that, just as Tumblr’s name is missing a vowel, its simplistic interface is missing several key features. It’s been downloaded for Firefox 40,000 times and for Chrome 250,000 times.
To Tumblr, however, it has been a stubborn thorn in its side. Tumblr claims that the enhancement tool can cause significant problems on the network. However, its intrusive (and still ongoing) campaign against the plugin has recruited more users than it has deterred.
Cutler maintains that the plugin is perfectly safe, and that while he isn’t sure why Tumblr’s staff has launched tirades against it, he finds it hard not to take it personally. Regardless, the tool’s immense support from users encourages him to continue maintaining it.
On the occasion of Missing E’s birthday, Cutler took time to acknowledge the plugin’s many fans.
“As most of you know, Missing e has been a target of criticism as well as praise,” he wrote. “However, recently topping 900,000 downloads and winning a nomination for next week’s Shorty Awards gives me the heart to keep at it!”
If Missing E wins a Shorty Award—a prize given for efforts in social media—perhaps Tumblr would be forced to publicly state why it has a problem with this particular plugin, and not any of the many others that modify and arguably improve the Tumblr experience.
It would be the perfect birthday present.
