Happy Friday the 13th, everyone!
What do you get when you combine Twitter and blogging? Apparently, you get Tumblr. Tumblr reminds me of Pinterest a little bit, but Tumblr was here first. So what exactly is Tumblr?
Straight from the Tumblr website: Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, email, or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors, to your theme's HTML.
Tumblr is microblogging, or blogging in brief. Tumblr certainly makes it easier for people to comment on your randomness. With Twitter, you have to rely on @'s and direct messages (or DMs) in order to see what people have to say about your tweets. In Tumblr, you have a comments section, just like on a "regular" blog. I haven't tried it out myself yet, but maybe this is a way to go since I gave up on maintaining my personal, "normal-sized" blog because I simply didn't have the time. Thank goodness for this group blog, or I wouldn't be blogging at all! Tumblr requires a little bit more of a time commitment than Twitter, but still not a whole lot. Yet another short but sweet way to get information across in our (some say) ADD-addled, information-driven age.
It seems particularly great for artists--hey, look at this thing I made! Comment on it! Give me some feedback. Or pictures you take with your phone of weird things you see while you're out and about and want to post online. Hey, look at this weird thing I saw! ...And you get the idea. But I'm sure it's great for other things as well.
You don't hear about Tumblr as much as you hear about Twitter, Facebook, and even Pinterest (which is fairly new), though. Which leads me to wonder if it's around to stay. People who use it seem to really like it. Sarah Dessen, one of my favorite authors, has a Tumblr, and I haven't even checked it out yet. Which leads me to wonder if I'm really even a Tumblr person. Or if I would ever become one.
In a way, I'm wondering if all these guys are just chasing Facebook. I wonder how long any of them are going to be around. I wonder when/if we'll ever have another innovation like that. I mean, there was social media before Facebook (remember MySpace? Friendster? etc.), but Facebook took things to another level. No matter what you think of Facebook, you have to admit there was a lot of ingenuity and sheer creative force behind it. Nobody's really one upped Facebook yet. Not truly. Will they? Can they? What will be the "next Facebook?" I guess you can never really know until it gets here. And I guess that's kind of an arrogant thing to say/assume. Kind of like how saying "I've written the next Harry Potter" is sure to get an eye-roll from anybody reading your query letter. No matter who you are, when you're creating something, you have to do the best you can, put it out there, and just wait to see how it's received. And although you can control a lot of things (from revising to pre-screenings to focus groups depending on what your product is), you can't ultimately control that reception. Unless you can read minds or something.
So what do you think? Have you tried Tumblr? What are your experiences if you have?
2 comments:
No Nicole, I haven't tried Tumblr and I don't even keep up very well on my Twitter and Facebook. I keep wondering how the big authors manage to have daily post about who they went to dinner with last night, or where they will be having book signings, and still manage vacations and writing. A friend near me is a writer and she says the same thing. However, one of the writers I email a lot told me she basically pays someone to maintain all her techy stuff so all she has to do is make a note. I feel so overwhelmed by the articles I read about writing that I sometimes just give up. But then I decide not to worry about all that until I have something to put out there! Thanks for the interesting blog!
Haven't tried it. Sounds promising though
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