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Don’t Abandon Your Blog for Tumblr

By Mark Evans in Blogs, Social Media 2 Comments Tags: , ,

TumblrThere’s an awful lot of excitement these days about Tumblr, which is now attracting 400 million pageviews/day and 8.4 billion pageviews/month. The buzz around Tumblr has been cranked up by people such as Steve Rubel, who recently decided to abandon his blogs to embrace Tumblr, calling it the “next great social network”.

But here’s the thing: Tumblr may be described as a micro-blog or a quasi-blog but it’s not a blog and, as a result, it shouldn’t been seen as a replacement for a blog.

Instead, Tumblr is a wonderful and valuable complement to a blog because it offers another way to publish and share content using a platform that is user-friendly and, of course, increasingly popular.

In my case, I’m using Tumblr to share content that isn’t quite right or not a good fit for my blog but, nevertheless, has some value or strikes me as interesting. As a result, it’s a place where I publish photos (a recent one featured a new Krispy Kreme Doughut Cafe), info-graphics about social media and the Web, and stuff on the Web I find interesting such as cool sign-up forms. I guess in a sense it’s a personal/professional life-stream platform.

Unlike Rubel, there is no way I would abandon my blog to exclusively use Tumblr. Here’s why:

1. When you use Tumblr, the content is posted on their platform so you don’t have complete control. On the other hand, a blog is personal or corporate asset that you can control, move, etc.

2. While Tumblr does provide a fair degree of flexibility, it doesn’t have the developer or design ecosystem that WordPress offers.

3. A blog can be tightly integrated into a Web site, providing a lot of SEO goodness that a standalone platform such as Tumblr.com can’t offer.

For thoughts on Tumblr vs. a blog, check out this post from Spin Sucks.

What Are You Thinking, Steve Rubel?

By Mark Evans in Blogs, Social Media 1 Comment Tags: , ,

So Steve Rubel, one of the thought leaders within social media, has decided blogs are no longer a viable platform for anyone looking to have a strong online presence.

As a result, he’s making the leap to Tumblr, driven by the belief Google is paying more attention to social signals. For whatever reason, Rubel thinks blogs are passe while Tumblr is a more attractive and logical digital option. In the process, he’s deleting hundreds of posts from two blogs.

To be honest, I think it’s dumb. It’s like chasing the hot, new girl (or guy) at school because they have six fingers rather than five. It doesn’t make the new girl/boy better, just different.

Keep in mind Rubel proclaimed two years ago that he was jumping away from blogging to embrace Posterous because life-streaming was the new way to go. Either Rubel has a commitment problem or he’s searching for digital nirvana.

Don’t get me wrong, change is good. But chasing the digital dream by jumping from service to service strikes me as a Don Quixote-like exercise.

I see a few things wrong with Rubel’s thesis. First, trying to play to Google’s search focus is like trying to hit a moving target. As much as Google is the dominant player, it changes the rules and tweaks its algorithm on a regular basis. In embracing Tumblr, Rubel is playing a game of digital whack-a-mole.

Second, Rubel doesn’t control Tumblr, Tumblr does. If Tumblr decides to update or change its service, Rubel has no control. In contrast, Rubel controls his blogs. It’s a personal digital asset as opposed to an online service. Rather than own a digital home, Rubel has decided to rent an apartment.

Again, it’s a decision he thinks makes sense but strikes me as way too idealistic.

I wish Rubel luck but I’d bet you a dollar he’ll be jumping on something new in a year or two.

GigaOm’s Mathew Ingram has more thoughts on Rubel’s “scorched earth” approach.

Why Tumblr is Poised to be Huge

By Mark Evans in Blogs, Social Media 1 Comment Tags: , , ,

Tumblr just raised $20-million, which shouldn’t come as a major surprise given the large amounts of venture capital being thrown around these days. It’s solidifies the belief a service with millions of users doesn’t necessarily need to have a business model that throws off lots of revenue and profits.

Putting aside Tumblr’s business model, which is apparently being driven by hosting blogs for large media companies, it could easily be belle of the social media ball in 2011. As someone who has caught the Tumblr bug, I think it will start to resonate with not only the digerati but “regular” people as well because Tumblr sits in the sweet spot between Twitter and blogs (aka Blogger, WordPress).

This is an interesting place to be because there are a lot of people now using Twitter who may be looking to use a platform that offers more real estate than 140 characters. Part of Twitter’s appeal is that 140 characters is easy and quick but there’s a limit to how much information or content that can be delivered. On the other hand, blogs can be a lot of work because you need an idea, it has to be well written and it takes time.

This is where Tumblr comes into play: It offers more real estate than Twitter but it isn’t positioned as something that is used for long posts. Tumblr encourages people to use it for a variety of reasons – blog posts, photos, video, audio or quotes. This makes Tumblr appealing to the social media and blog geeks, as well as offering everyone else something that it user-friendly and useful.

For these reasons, Tumblr could emerge as the social media star of 2011 – making it an overnight success after being around for a couple of years. Tumblr’s mainstream appeal is something Foursquare was never able to capture despite it being hailed by the geeks at SXSW as the next Twitter. Foursquare has lots of users but it’s really a niche service.

Do not be surprised if a growing number of people start climbing on the Tumblr bandwagon, including the social media “influencers” who will start to put the spotlight on how they have embraced Tumblr much like they were did after Twitter started to emerge as the next big thing.

For more on Tumblr, check out ReadWriteWeb, which compared Tumblr with WordPress.



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