A Review of Tumblr

These days, there are so many social media sites out there. Facebook, twitter, WordPress, Blogspot, Tumblr, Pintrist… So many different ways to connect, to share information, and to make new friends.

Authors need to be able to utilize these tools to the best of their abilities. As I said in my early posts, gone are the days where writers could just sit in the corner and work in the dark, being antisocial and only connecting with people through what they write. Nowadays, fans want to have something real to connect to. They want to meet the writer at signings. They want to follow the person’s thoughts on a blog. They want to friend them on Facebook and see the latest news.

I’ve gotten to a pretty good level of using Facebook, Twitter, and a bunch of other sites. They each have their own pros and cons, and I use each of them for different things.

But this past week, I’ve been experimenting with Tumblr.

Tumblr is another in a line of microblogging. It’s just a quick sharing of images, lines of text, or a combination of the two. It makes sharing easy, as the predominant buttons on the site are “Like post” in the shape of a heart and “Reblog post”. The great thing about reblogging is you can always see where the original came from.

Tumblr is a lot like any other blog site. Sometimes the people have a theme. They blog only things pertaining to a certain subject, place, or person. Sometimes (and most blogs fall into this category) they’re a conglomeration of every random thing the person finds amusing. Most active Tumblr users are in their early teens.

But that doesn’t mean its useless. I’ve been able to find quite a few entertainment companies with active Tumblrs. It’s another way they connect with their fans and share quick information. Plus tracking their views, followers, likes, and reshares is incredibly easy on Tumblr.

My first introduction to Tumblr was seeing The Oatmeal (an online comic artist) create a drawing for them when they had technical errors. Just as Twitter has the Fail Whale, Tumblr has Tumblr beasts.

While these Tumbeasts made me giggle, I didn’t much pay attention to them here.

It wasn’t until a week or so back, when I noticed that most of the gifs I was looking to use, had originated from Tumblr. Having nothing better to do (the job search still hasn’t picked up), I decided to try it out.

Tumblr is a lot more fun and a lot more interesting than you would think it was. It’s a community, just like any other site. But it’s a community that’s very easy to communicate in. There are always the anonymous trolls, the plague of the internet, but most people I’ve had the pleasure of talking to are incredibly nice.

You can find Tumblr blogs for every interest you might have. I’ve found quite a few successful blogs that mostly use theirs to write little blurbs, ficlets, or poetry. Writing is just as successful as images there.

While I predominantly use mine to follow David Tennant blogs and express my love for Doctor Who (my theme is the Rules of Doctor Who), I can honestly say I’ve found a new site I really love. Once I get more writing stuff to share that isn’t fanfiction, I will start another Tumblr blog for my writing. Who knows? When I become a published author, maybe I can even share stuff like cover art, fan art, and news on what I’m up to. Tumblr is a very useful site for people of any profession, if not just fun. I give it a high recommendation.