Tumbling Tumblr has been tumbling here, there and everywhere in the world of blogging and online journals. After six years of giving us enough ROFL moments, it has struck gold. Recently in the news for the billion-dollar deal with Yahoo!, Tumblr continues to be a threat for blogging mediums like Wordpress and Blogger. And it has even made Facebook sit up.
Most Netizens are Tumblr-ing away to glory, especially given the simplicity of its interface. But for those who aren’t (yet) here is a t2 set of FAQs.
What is Tumblr?
A web log or blog that was clicked into place in 2007 by David Karp, a high-school dropout running his own software consulting company in New York City. What inspired Karp was the lack of tumblelog or microblogging websites. Twitter was barely born back then.
Tumblr is definitely more than Twitter and a little less than Wordpress, Blogger or Weebly. Most bloggers on Tumblr stick to posts with pictures, videos, audios rather than long, elaborate writings. Though there are the likes of Anthony Bourdain, Amitabh Bachchan and some who break into long wordy posts, Tumblr just isn’t the right place for the garrulous blogger.
Love, Reblog or Ignore?
Tumblr is the place for short and crisp posts. Added to the features of uploading photographs and audio-visuals, there is also the possibility of quoting (along with the source). With a Twitter-like style, the blogs on “following list” pop up onto the homepage with the latest updates, and the only signs of reciprocation are love and reblog (read favourite and retweet for the tweeples).
Thankfully there is no character limit here, but the unspoken rule is the shorter the better. So go ahead and write your heart out but make sure it isn’t a 1,000-word essay!
What’s the buzz?
Tumblr has been buzzing with fandom and fanfiction. Type in Cumberbatch and get about a 100 results about Benedict Cumberbatch fan blogs complete with Gifs (a file format that allows a sequence of pictures to “move”), videos, Cumberbatch trivia and the latest on his Sherlock, Star Wars and what not.
On the other hand, with the easy-peasy small posts, fan-fic writers keep up their posts with a link back to the latest chapters from their websites. So imagine George R.R. Martin just re-reading his well-scripted A Song of Ice and Fire being undone and Ned Stark alive at Casterly Rock and giving away his daughter Sansa to The Imp, Tyrion Lannister. The Supernatural, Sherlock Holmes, Harry Potter, A Song of Ice and Fire, Teen Wolf, One Direction — fan-fic is an entirely different story altogether.
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| Celebrity lives are barely a secret these days, yet Awesome People Hanging Out Together (awesomepeople hangingouttogether.tumblr.com) manages to bring forth some of the unexpected people photographed together. So here’s (in picture) Sheldon Cooper aka Jim Parsons with the Unapologetic Rihanna! |
Moving away, Tumblr has a neat line-up of blogs according to their genres in the ‘Spotlight’, the section where they highlight the popular blogs in each genre right from travel, books, films, photography to cute, funny, LGBTQ, parenting, street style and more. Take your own sweet pick!
India on Tumblr
The online community in India still seems to be juggling Twitter, Facebook and Google +, while the world of Tumblr grows bigger and bigger. The recent deal with Yahoo! did raise some eyebrows and also the number of sign-ups, but there isn’t much action.
Bollywood and India travel blogs are big on Tumblr, but that’s all where it figures.
t2 Loves...
Given the quirky
set-up it is Youngistan which is more attracted to Tumblr.
For those who have been on Wordpress, Tumblr is a breather and makes life simpler with easy free themes and customisable type texts.
The homepage rolls out the updates from the blogs that one is following.
The features of Love and Reblog allow exposure and engagement.
And if you simply hate any of the bloggers, there is the ‘Ignore’ button in the shape of a hand.
Fan Mail, Ask Me a Question and the super cool Chat Box allow bloggers to communicate but it is up to the user to decide whether the conversation gets published on the blog or not.
Tumblr blogs can also be made private by password-protecting.
t2 Hates...
Limited freedom to design one’s own blog and lack of add-on widgets except for Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
The lack of comments or replies option to posts cuts short the possibility of an open debate or discussion. Comments, however, can be incorporated into the blog through a third party tool called Disqus.
It doesn’t show who’s following you or how many. Though this is not necessarily a con as this can be interpreted as a way of keeping the numbers off your mind, unless you are worried about the number of loves and reblogs.
On the follow list
Amitabh Bachchan — A diary format blog, Senior Bachchan chooses to write about his work and thoughts, sharing his pains and worries about physical ailments, in a 450-word post, plus a few. At times punctuated with pictures from his life that one might seldom get a chance to see. Bachchan Bol has a revered number of followers as can be gathered from the number of ‘notes’ on his posts.
Zooey Deschanel — A personal diary, mostly photo posts of the ‘New Girl’s’ dogs, her manicured fingernails, co-actors, events, it is Zooey’s life on the run. Goes by the name Zooey’s Miscellany (zooeydeschanel.tumblr.com).
Joseph Gordon Levitt — “This here tumblr is a RECord of various things I find and make from and for the Internet.” — Nothing can describe Joe’s tumblr Hit Record Joe (hitrecordjoe.tumblr.com) better.
Coco Rocha — This Canadian model who has posed for the likes of Vogue has made the best use of her Tumblr Oh So Coco
(oh-so-coco.tumblr.com) as a platform for self-promotion. Complete with linkbacks to every other profile on the Net that she holds while using the blog as a real-time travelogue, one could take a page out of her book, er, blog.
