Off The Written Path

Tumblr screen shot.

There were two things that struck me in a recent post in Mashable about the Washington Post Tumblr blog @innovations. One is that the blog  explains how some stories are reported at the Post (which as a journalism student I think it’s awesome, check out this post about the design of the NCAA cover).

 The other thing is, I know nothing about Tumblr. What is it?

If you look in the About section of Tumblr you will find this gem from the Telegraph.co.uk:

“Weblogs? Been there, done that. Facebook? It’s full of kids. Twitter? That’s so 2006, darling. No, the smart thing to be doing online these days is tumblelogging, which is to weblogs what text messages are to email – short, to the point, and direct.”

 So, from reading the other quotes on the About page I get that Tumblr is a microblogging site akin to Twitter. But if it’s just like Twitter what is the big deal about Tumblr? Why not just use Twitter? Well the answer is that it is not just like Twitter.

I found the best explanation for my questions about Tumblr in a post  by  Jennifer Van Grove  in Mashable. She says that  Tumblr fills the space between Twitter and a blog. Tumblr is microblogging, but it is a whole lot more. It does not confine you to 140 characters, you can pick your own theme for your Tumblr blog, and you can also share photos on Tumblr. But it can be done in a fast and easy way like Twitter. One thing I should mention is that from reading other Tumblr blogs and posts about Tumblr I get the sense there is a very specific and tight knit community of Tumblr users that help give the site its life. 

For a full list of everything you can do on Tumblr look at their ‘why everyone loves Tumblr” page.

 Their ‘About Tumblr’ page basically says you can “share anything” and “custumize everything” in a Tumblr blog.

And while searching for answers about Tumblr I ran into another microblogging site Posterous which is apparently trying to take Tumblr’s crown in microblogging ‘rich media content,'( that means blogging photos, video, audio, ect., in your posts).  

Next post: Posterous, What is it?