Thinking about differences in reception between cohost and tumblr, the two main places I post. This isn't meant to be rigorous, and also a lot of it determined by what I post (very little, mostly fanart for niche fandoms). The highest number of notes I've ever gotten is like 500, so nothing big time. Anyway.
Cohost
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rate of shares to likes is way higher. Obviously I don't have precise nos, but I think sometimes it's been as high as 80%, which is wild. On tumblr you're lucky to get like 10-20% reblogs to likes.
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posts tend to do better on cohost in the first 24 hours. It feels like when you put something new in front of the audience here everyone gets really excited.
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text posts do better here than on tumblr, in terms of actual responses like commenta/replies.
Tumblr
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I don't know why, but tumblr has a much better tail. Old art, even stuff that's like a year old, will regularly get a new like/reblog. Presumably some of that is just raw users, but I think the app must be doing something to put that art in front of people also.
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you get more feedback on tumblr because people leave cute notes in the tags. It makes sense, because comments are permanent and public facing, whereas tags are discreet and ephemeral and private. So people are much braver and more likely to say things there. But the og post creator gets to see them too, which is nice.
This isn't an a is better than b post - I think cohost is better, but for other reasons - it's just interesting. To me.