Last August I complained about Tumblarity and I wasn’t alone. Many people didn’t like how Tumblarity motivated the Tumblr community to post and repost drivel and I’m very happy to see that the Tumblr team has, as far as I can tell from my desk, decided to do away with it. But I also said this about how Tumblarity could still be of use to Tumblr:
"If it was a hidden ranking system then people wouldn’t be driven to do things only to increase their rank and it could still be used for valuable things like Tumblr’s directory."
I don’t know if Tumblr repurposed Tumblarity to help power their new Directory but credit where due I’m glad it isn’t on Tumblr in a way that motivates spamming any more.