Last week a friend told me they were going to start a blog. They asked me the difference between WordPress, Tumblr and a few others. This post is an attempt to explain that answer.
I’ve been using Tumbr since 2007. Almost 5 years later and I’ve created over 6k posts. I’m proud to call myself an active Tumblr user.
I pretty much find something to post every day. I missed day is a very rare thing. The user interface is so well designed and beautiful. It couldn’t be easier.
But thing that most people find special about Tumblr is the community. I certainly do. It’s engaged, active and tight in a wide range of categories like fashion, music, photography, tech, books, etc.
And this community wasn’t imported from another network like a facebook’s graph. It was built purposefully for the Tumblr experience.
When Tumblr started, it was the easiest way to create a tumblelog. But as the community grew and so did the experience. As a result, w now have a service of content creators, and the audience, but a couple of years ago a highly engaged new activity happened.
Curation.
On Tumblr, curation happens when users reblog content they see in their Tumblr Dashboard (feed). And that curation brought in new users which in turn became new curators. Today the number one way people join tumblr is by seeing a Tumblr page online and clicking the “join tumblr” link in the top right corner.
A reblog on Tumblr is a big deal. It’s something I find so special that not only do I want to share it with everyone but I want it to live on my very own page, my Tumblr, on my domain forever.
As a result, the reblog “hurdle” is high and Tumbr reblogs are rich in value. They are meaningful to the content creator, curator and audience.
The people and things I follow are a joy. I love it here.
And that’s why I use Tumblr every day.