What to you get when you mix Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and WordPress together? You get Tumblr!
Tumblr is a bite-size blog (technical term is “micro-blog”) geared for people who want to share mixed media such as photos, videos, music, etc. instead of text-based blog postings. Here is a 1-minute video explaining Tumblr:
Similar to the recent phenomenon Pinterest (here are my Pinerest boards, in case you wondered), Tumblr allows users to share multimedia or text postings and then other users can easily “Reblog” the post. In fact, Tumbr has a bookmarklet that can be installed on your browser’s toolbar so that you can quickly share something that you like while surfing the Internet via your Tumblr account. But people don’t just pull stuff from the web to post on Tumblr. You can post your original content, too. For example, MyVintageVogue, featuring vintage fashion advertising images that have been restored, is a perfect example of a blog that is ideally suited for the Tumblr platform. Jessica, the author, has over 15,000 followers and all of her posts generate tons of “likes” and “reblogs.”
List of "Likes" and "Reblogs" from a newly published MyVintageVogue Tumblr Post
People seem to like Tumblr for micro-blogging because it is more powerful than Twitter for sharing things–you actually get to see the image instead of just a link–and they are not limited to 140 characters. It is also more flexible than Pinterest which is primarily geared for visual images and not multimedia. Like Twitter and Facebook, you can quickly build a community of followers. In fact, many bloggers use Tumblr as a way to advertise their full-fledged blogs (we’ll get into that later).
But there are some downsides, too. Currently, the main demographic for Tumblr is the 18-25 age group. But I imagine that will change as us “old-fogeys” start discovering the benefits of Tumblr, too. Like we did with Facebook. And Twitter.
But for me, Tumblr’s greatest disadvantage for bloggers is the fact that followers can’t leave comments. My 20-year-old nephew started out using Tumblr for his personal blog where he shares his thoughts on his faith, being a college student, and how the Angels are doing. But he got annoyed with Tumblr’s focus on micro-blogging and the fact that he couldn’t carry on a conversation with his readers. He switched to Blogger and says he likes it a lot better. He still has his Tumblr account but he only uses it occasionally to share videos and images.
If the primary purpose of your blog is to share images, quotes, videos, music, etc., and you’re not interested in comments, then Tumblr may be the best platform for you to use.
Let’s start blogging!
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