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Tumblr is set to become the blogging tool of 2010 with its massive growth, yet still many people don’t fully understand what Tumblr does, or how it works. If you’ve ever tried to start a blog, but found yourself struggling to find the time, Tumblr is something you’re definitely going to want to take a look at.
Put simply, Tumblr is a service that does exactly what WordPress does for blogging, but for microblogging, or tumbleblog’s instead. To fully understand what Tumblr does, you first need to understand what these so-called tumbleblog’s actually are.
A tumblelog is a variation of a blog, that favors short-form, mixed-media posts over the longer editorial posts frequently associated with blogging. Common post formats found on tumbleblogs include links, photos, quotes, dialogues, and video. Unlike blogs, this format is frequently used to share the author’s creations, discoveries, or experiences without providing a commentary. – Wikipedia
What does this mean? Well basically, Tumblr fills the gap between Twitter, where people tweet resources, images, and thoughts, and traditional blogging platforms, like WordPress where each post is a proper article. Instead, Tumblr works with seven types of post; text, photo, quote, link, chat, audio and video, and it handles them all very well.
According to Tumblr statistic’s, in the last six months, Tumblr has grown from around 300M monthly page views, to over 1 Billion in February 2010; a massive growth for any product, and it speaks for itself really. A product doesn’t grow at such a rapid rate, if people aren’t enjoying using it.
The biggest reason behind Tumblr’s growing support, is it’s vast number of social features, and it’s ease of use. For a start, Tumblr make it extremely offer for you to post to your blog, even if you can’t access your homepage yourself. Here are some of the clever ways Tumblr makes it possible for you to update your tumbleblog:
As well as the fantastic free iPhone app that is available officially from Tumblr, you also have access to a multitude of applications for the iPhone, Web, Desktop’s, Mobile’s, Widget’s and Browser’s. They are all filed away tidily in an official Tumblr app directory.
Definitely high up on the list of reasons for Tumblr’s acceptance has been its solid two-way integration with other social media, and networking services. Part of its automatic posting from other sites come from major names such as Digg, Youtube, Facebook and Twitter, but it doesn’t stop there. As well as having the ability to automatically pull in your content live from these sites, you can also send information back. Facebook is a prime example with its ability to show your activity on Tumblr on your Facebook wall, keeping all your friends up to date with what your blogging and activity.
Other than those already mentioned, Tumblr also focus’ on those important, but small things that you need.
First off, Tumblr wouldn’t be where it was if it wasn’t for its easy to use backend user interface. The interface is split into two sections; the dashboard, where your’s and other peoples content meet you, and customisation, where you control all sorts of aspects of your tumbleblog.
Posting any of the seven different type’s of content from your dashboard is a breeze, with visual buttons, and a clean design. The backend goes on to keep you up-to-date with all the Tumbleblogs you are following, in a very Twitter like manner, keeping it clean and easy to read. For a look at how the dashboard looks, click on the image below.
Customisation though, is a whole different kettle of fish. It is basically a dummy page of your current theme, with one default entry in each of the seven post categories. A menu bar at the top of the page allows you to make many important, and useful changes and decisions that affect your tumbleblog.
The menu provides a multitude of options;
As you change these options, especially your theme options, the dummy page below changes to mirror the choices you have made, allowing you to check how your blog will look, as you work.
Tumblr is a fantastic piece of kit, filling in that gap in the market between products such as wordpress that provide full blogs, social networking such as facebook, and status updating from Twitter, and it does it extremely well. Tumblr is honestly a pleasure to work with. Simplicity makes the user interface effect and easy to use, and you never feel like there isn’t anything important missing, or out of your control. It makes blogging and sharing things you find on the internet a breeze, and most importantly, unlike Twitter, it does so visually. If you find yourself failing to keep a full blog up-to-date, and enjoy sharing the things you find, the there’s no easier way to do so than Tumblr, so give it a go.
For those that do choose to start using Tumblr, or already do, then keep an eye here, because coming up are several articles that will increase your happiness with Tumblr, such as a roundup of fantastic themes, and more importantly learning how to create your own custom theme! For now, check out these 5 impressive tumbleblogs for inspiration to see what Tumblr is truly capable of.
Hope you enjoyed this post – keep coming back for more!
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Matt is an 18 year old web designer from Scotland, UK. He loves creating beautiful websites across different platforms. High on his things to learn fully are Jquery and php. He is extremely excited by css3 and html5 and can't wait to see them rolled out fully. To learn more about Matt, follow him @QwibbleDesigns, or check out his portfolio.
Thursday, February 16th, 2012 03:23
“Built in privacy allows you to restrict specific posts, or your whole blog to certain people”
But how? I’d like to have a multi-level approach to who can view websites. I’d love if some posts could be public, some could be seen by people who follow me/I follow, and some could be seen by only select followers. But how? Is this possible?
Monday, January 9th, 2012 17:04
what date was this published?
Friday, December 30th, 2011 04:00
Thx Matt, you helped me to really understand “How” to use Tumblr and “How” it works and did so in a simple easy to understand way. Much Appreciation. As for the comments on your grammar, take it in stride. Yes there are some grammatical errors that interrupt the reading flow a bit but overall your article accomplished the end goal. Thx again. And to person who made the comments, when giving feedback or advice you might want to consider “how” you phrase that advice, that is if you’re really trying to be “helpful.”
Matt Good Luck with your goals on tackling CSS3 and all…I’m still struggling with basic CSS, LOL. Looking forward to more great “helpful” post from you.
Wednesday, November 30th, 2011 10:31
You can visit http://www.facebook.com/webdesignblog if you want to be updated always!
Tuesday, September 20th, 2011 07:26
As soon as I came over to this blog post I can only look at part of it, is this my internet cell phone browser or the internet web site? Should I restart?
Monday, September 19th, 2011 09:38
I adore your blog site! Just wantet to post something.
Tuesday, July 5th, 2011 02:33
There’s a great video the explains what tumblr is in one minute here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C47FUM6lgk
Monday, April 18th, 2011 09:13
You’ve got a serious problem with apostrophes in this article… they do NOT indicate plurals! I actually stopped reading and started skimming this because of the grammar mistakes. (I know, I’m being that douchey person on the Internet, but I assume you’re trying to put across an aura of professionalism here…)
Monday, May 2nd, 2011 03:31
Yeah, Im with this douche. The apostrophes are a turnoff.
Saturday, October 22nd, 2011 15:52
You’re right…you are being that person. Most ‘tech’ people are not great writers. I didn’t come here for a grammar lesson. Go away, or start your own blog.
Thursday, December 1st, 2011 20:43
Oh thank you LemonFresh — those apostrophes were driving me crazy, too.
Monday, January 17th, 2011 14:41
Can Tumblr autopost? I find it does fine with FB but doesn’t import well via rss feed and doesn’t export well to Twitter. What I like about Posterous are the autoposts. It can send posts about anywhere. I’m looking for something within tumblr that’s the same but can’t find it.
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010 22:19
Matt. Nice info. How easy is it to set up Tumblr to look similar to a website with more form and structure? Do I need a designer to do it?
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010 16:58
Tumblr is what it is, a blogging tool. It now has support for “pages”, but you are unlikely to get anywhere near the sort of custom websites that you can have with say, wordpress.
What tumblr does is make microblogging easy to the masses. It isnt really intended to support a full website.
Friday, April 2nd, 2010 20:19
Interesting and informative. Tumblr never crossed my mind.
Monday, March 29th, 2010 02:01
a Tumblr blog does seem like a good idea for something like a portfolio, or rather, for something in between a portfolio and a sketchbook-type blog like a lot of artists seem to have, something where they can post sketches or work in progress. A lot of people enjoy these “behind the scenes/look in the kitchen” kind of things so it might be a good way to connect with people who like your work.
Nice article. Thanks.
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010 16:28
I’m one of those people who has heard of Tumblr mentioned before, but thought it was just a free alternative to CMS sites like WordPress.
As a result of this article, I think I’ll look into it, but not swayed as yet. I think I’ll be sticking with WordPress, which also has a growing user-base on top of its already-massive following.
Times do change, though…
Friday, March 26th, 2010 15:23
It certainly depends what your goal is. For example, are you after a blogging platform, or a CMS? If you’re after blogging, is it a personal blog, or a sophisticated articles blog. There are many variables.
Monday, March 22nd, 2010 03:48
I just decided to drop my 6 year old wordpress blog and make the switch, starting today. I’m pretty excited for the breath of fresh air.
Sunday, March 21st, 2010 22:47
I think I might have to finally look into Tumblr.. Thanks for the article!
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Mohammad Jeprie
Monday, March 15th, 2010 13:49
is this similar to posterous? looks like i need to try this.
Matt Corner
Monday, March 15th, 2010 18:13
I honestly can’t really give an honest comment on that as Posterous is something I’ve never ever looked into. I have however noticed that of the Tumblr articles out there, the vast majority are comparing it to WordPress and Posterous, so I’d guess that they’d have some similarities. Just googling Tumblr vs. Posterous got me a multitude of article you may want to read up on.
Saad Bassi
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010 09:15
Well every one is asking about the comparison of tumblr and Posterous. You can say that they are pretty similar. Both are micro blogging services which allow you to set your dns to your custom domain.
Why Choose Tumblr: Well, first of all tumblr has a very rich API. Because of this API, there are tools available for your tumblr like desktop client and so many other tools.
Why Choose Posterous: I have experience with posterous as well, but I will not suggest you to choose it as there are no or very less softwares available to use.
Except this everything is almost same between Tumblr and Posterous.
Logobird
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010 01:23
Excellent overview of Tumblr. I have a few friends that use it and swear by it. I guess now is the time for me to take a look at it as well.
Thanks for this.
Matt Corner
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010 10:09
No problem, I’m glad you’ve found it helpful, and are deciding to take a look at Tumblr =)
Mike Haynes
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010 18:14
I’ve really come to appreciate the power of Tumblr over the past year. It does everything I need to maintain a simple technology tumble log (MiamiWebPros.com). I really like the bookmarklet capability that allows me to post from any web page that I am currently viewing. I was previously using “Storytlr”, but they have stopped supporting the platform. Tumblr has been a very suitable replacement.
Matt Corner
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 19:03
I have to agree. The bookmarklet is a very strong pro for using Tumblr for me. The less I have to do to post content that I find to my blog, the better =)
Rory Dixon
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 02:13
I’m into Posterous – it’s pure simplicity. As the newer microblogging platform, it doesn’t have the bank of templates or backend functionality that Tumblr does, but frankly, if you don’t need any of that, Posterous does the trick nicely – you don’t even have to set up an account!
Since Posterous introduced the ability to use your own theme, they are pretty much neck and neck.
Matt Corner
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 19:00
Yeah, but Tumblr would appear to have a larger userbase. I guess we can only wait and see. It may turn out to be another one of those wordpress over blogger things.
Marnie B
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 00:57
I started using Tumblr about a week ago and I’m so hooked. I had a Posterous account a while back, but wasn’t thrilled about using it.
Tumblr makes it fun with cool templates, an even cooler interface and one hell of an iPhone app!
Matt Corner
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 19:05
Agreed xD
Rebecca
Monday, March 15th, 2010 19:50
Excellent article. I have noticed that Tumblr is catching on and it has some good uses, but I also know a lot of people who are unfamiliar with it.
Matt Corner
Monday, March 15th, 2010 20:14
Which is exactly what this series of articles aims to change =)
Dainis Graveris
Monday, March 15th, 2010 19:04
Thank you a lot, Matt for this great article..you introduced Tumblr for me too in quite a new level :) Glad you are keeping track of people responses as well – you are great guy!
Matt Corner
Monday, March 15th, 2010 20:28
It was a joy to write, thanks for the compliments =)
Doug Slater
Monday, March 15th, 2010 18:11
I think I’m going to have to take a closer look at Tumblr. It looks like something that would be useful for web promotion.
Matt Corner
Monday, March 15th, 2010 18:18
I’ve seen a trend in web designers using it instead of the traditional blogging platform, wordpress recently. WordPress in the life of a web designer becomes a chore to update, where Tumblr isn’t.
I’ve also seen Tumblr being used as a portfolio of work, much like how the two Tumbleblogs, It’s the interwebs, and Name that film work. It’s an article Im strongly considering writing once I finish the normal tumbleblog layout one.
Emrah Omuris
Monday, March 15th, 2010 17:26
Brilliant article. I’ve always wanted to start using Tumblr and this article will help me to crack on. Thanks!
Amberly | Web Designer
Monday, March 15th, 2010 16:00
Great article. I think Tumblr is definitely a gift to microbloggers who are interested in exploring the implications for simplicity
Keep up the good work!
Shaan
Monday, March 15th, 2010 17:01
Good article. How different is it from Twitter?
Matt Corner
Monday, March 15th, 2010 18:07
I guess you could say its twitter, but more refined. Lets say that you’d like to replace Tumblr with your twitter feed, you wouldnt find much of a difference. Your links and posts are certainly more visual, especially since you don’t actually need to link to them, you can instead display media like video, links, audio, and graphics.
Like twitter, Tumblr also has followers. The only other major difference’s I can see are the ability to have a custom domain, the ability to skin it exactly how you like, and the lack of character limits.
Reading the article again, and comparing it as you read to the features of Twitter, will give you the next best comparison to actually trying Tumblr out yourself =)
Daniel
Monday, March 15th, 2010 20:14
great and interesting article
Kate
Monday, March 15th, 2010 14:28
Great post, been looking for more discussion about tumblr. Thanks.
Matt Corner
Monday, March 15th, 2010 18:08
No problem. Tumblr is a resource that lacks a lot of insight that WordPress and other blogging CMS’s get in web design blogs. This series will continue to explore further, ending up with the creation of a custom theme. =)