tumblr
Years ago, along with many other vowel-lacking dot com personal-documentary social websites requiring a free registration to use, this social blogger dutifully signed up for tumblr. But that’s about all I did with it. Well… I did sign in a few times a year to see if I remembered my password. Even bothered to change it and my tumblr theme a couple of times. Each visit reinforced the positive feeling of finding something new. Something fresh. And more often than not, something humorous. Over the last year or so I found myself signing in more often and noticed a lot of others had been doing the same. Enter the noticeable downtime.
Sometimes days passed before I could log in again. It got to the point where people habitually complained on other sites that tumblr was down, yet again. Perhaps the up-time was always spotty but I’d just never signed in often enough to notice. Aside from not being able to use it reliably there was the option of not having to use it actively at all, except to help others express themselves. Let me explain.
There’s this fun feature on tumblr you can use called re-blog. If you enjoyed a post you could re-blog it and go on your merry way. Eventually your tumblog becomes full of things you’ve liked, but didn’t create yourself, which is fine. Some users, aggregating found content in this way, have gotten very popular on tumblr. I can’t think of many other sites where original posts aren’t required to attract readers (or followers). That’s tumblr for you.
Some tumblogs consist almost entirely of original content, and for others the opposite is true. Most are a mix of both. Mine is a mix of both, but I’m going to play with that ratio over time to skew more original than re-blogged.
Like WP, the dashboard shows recent posts of other tumblrs I follow. The best part is that there I can enjoy gems around the web that I wouldn’t normally find on my own. A few I’ve been following for a long time are:
photojojo
annieisms
binarydigit
Clearly, I admire photo journals as I’m particularly bad about taking and then sharing my own photos. That’s something I’d like to change.
If you’re on tumblr what’s your favorite tumblog to follow? I could always use some good tumblrecs.
This is part 2 of a 5 part series. Check back soon for another fascinating obsession.
A Mad Notepad 
January 21st, 2011 at 10:50 am
I liked Tumblr’s model and reblogging, but I didn’t like the lack of community feel…which is why I stopped using it.
January 21st, 2011 at 1:36 pm
It’s definitely not as social from within its own site as other blogging services. However, combined with auto cross-posting capabilities to other social networks it can be a fun way to share photos and other content. My personal challenge is trying mix it up a little and post a variety of content. Not just quotes, photos, etc.