tumblr

“Tumblr—which is beloved by its users for its clean interface, ease of use and community.”- The New York Observer

“…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.” – Telegraph.co.uk

Tumblr is the slightly lesser known hybrid of Twitter and WordPress (or any other complex blogging platform). With all the capabilities of a blog but with a much more simple, attractive Web 2.0  WYSIWYG editor interface – or straight up HTML if you choose – this social media network caters to the needs of a time-crunched modern-day online user.

Much like Twitter, once you start following a certain user, their updates appear on your Dashboard (user-side interface). Follow loads of people, and a variety of real-time posts will display in your feed. As any social media site would be incomplete without creative interactivity features, Tumblr doesn’t disappoint. Favorite a post you like and view a feed of only favorited posts (similar to favoriting tweets).

The networking feature is the automated act of reblogging – literally stealing another post from a fellow Tumblr and posting it on yours, with accreditation (similar to retweeting). Tumblr puts it most eloquently: “The same way YouTube embeds make it easy for a video to become a viral hit, the “reblog” button on all Tumblr posts allows a meme to spread rapidly across thousands of blogs with just a click.”

Customizing is less exhaustive than WordPress development and with far less limitations than Twitter. A little bit of hand-coding goes a long way – no plugins required.

If you comb through the directory a bit, you’ll find a large art, design, tech and architecture community. Half of all the posts on Tumblr are images, explaining why photographers opt to reach more people and display their work through Tumblr more than other networks.

Like most still-developing social media networks, Tumblr is rapidly evolving and making its way up the ranks by adding new features and expanding its capabilities. They recently added the ability to link static pages on individual sites as well as video uploads (as opposed to just embedding links). There’s also talk of revenue-generating, although the details are scarce at this time. Unlike Facebook, there’s no advertising on the site.

Image Source: Mashable: The Social Media Guide