I recently discovered Tumblr, with a tip from colleague and friend Qui Diaz. As she said, Tumblr is like having a digital scrapbook. It takes micro-blogging to a whole new level by allowing you to quickly post text, photos, video, quotes, links, chats, and more. With the ability to post on the web, through IM (uses AIM) or your mobile phone using Vimeo, the possibilities are endless!
Think of Tumblr as Twitter times 10. You can follow other users, and it even offers an archive and RSS feed for users to get updates. The dashboard provides a real-time stream of updates from anyone in your network that you are following.
Why use Tumblr? I think it’s somewhere in between Twitter and a “real” blog. It allows you to post quick random links that you may not want to have as a blog post, or that are too long for Twitter.
Buzz Meter Ranking: 3 out of 4 Buzz Bees
Positive: Easy and fun to use, ability to post through mobile or IM. You can also easily integrate Tumblr to your own URL/domain name (mine coming soon!). It’s a nice, clean way to post anything you want from a variety of sources, whether it be YouTube, Flickr, or del.icio.us.
Negative: Does not have the ability to comment on the short posts, although it seems there are ways around that. You cannot tag your posts, so there is no organization, rather just a stream of consciousness. Also, editing the themes are somewhat limited, but I’m sure that there are ways around that as well. There have been some questions of content property on Tumblr, and who has the rights to such open information.
Conclusion: I like Tumblr. It’s a fun, no-brainer activity for me and a great place for all my random crap, er, thoughts. I see its value in between Twitter and a more robust blogging platform. I also see the concerns where it doesn’t allow for the same organization and interaction as other sites. But, maybe that’s what differentiates Tumblr from the crowd.
Larissa,
Great summary! I’ve been on Tumblr for a while now, switching over from WordPress. My favorite aspect is that the technical posting threshold is really lowered compared to WordPress. It makes posting and sharing that much easier. I owe Tumblr for getting me blogging again.
Anyway, I’ve been a Buzz Bin reader for a bit now (Google Reader suggested you!) and wanted to mention that Tumblr now actually has tags: http://staff.tumblr.com/post/34933619/new-feature-tag-filtering
They’re gearing up for a new “Pro” version launch and have been adding lots of great features over the past few days, tags being one of them.
Tumblr is a definitely good clearinghouse for random thoughts, but not for dialog (no commenting, no searchable, tagged content). But I kind of like it that way – who wants someone to write all over your personal journal?
Because of limited functionality, Tumblr’s probably not a good alternative to blogging outright. It might be a better as a repository of things you like. For me it’s the confluence of del.icio.us, Flickr and my off-line library of quotes.
There’s a pretty active community of Tumblr users that follow each other a la Twitter, but some of us (ahem) are not there to make friends. There isn’t much of a point when you can’t share comments.
@John – thanks for letting me know about the increased functionality! I (obviously) like Tumblr a lot too.
@Qui – You know I agree. :) Tumblr is my repository for all the stupid links, random pics, and things I find that I like that aren’t necessarily blog (or even Twitter) worthy.