Best Bytes: Tumblr: Out of Many One
Posted on July 5, 2011 by kcarlson | No Comments
By Kelly Battese, Arizona State University Libraries
Do you have a hard time keeping track of your many social networking accounts and their passwords? Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, Myspace, YouTube: each serves their own purpose and fulfills different social and information needs. However, Tumblr can enhance or replace them all.
Tumblr is a free micro-blogging service that allows users to post blogs, audio, video, quotes, chat, photos and links to a wider audience. Tumblr users post 2 million posts daily, over 15,000 people sign up every day and every second there are 18 posts and 5 reblogs.[1] There exist over 6 billion individual posts and close to 20 million users.[2]
Many other social networking applications can be linked to Tumblr. Facebook and Twitter can be linked to Tumblr so that a post can be shared amongst all or some of the user’s social networking accounts. Blackberry and Android phones can be used to publish to Tumblr. You can post by email or even post an audio message through your phone. Tumblr provides a blog backup system to save your posts and offers a Bookmarklet button where you can easily share what you find online to your Tumblr followers. You can also send your posts directly to a RSS Feed. Tumblr allows the user to customize the look of their Tumblr page. Premium themes are also offered. Tumblr also allows users to have a customized domain name.
The unique and very useful aspect of Tumblr comes through its use of tags. Each post can be tagged by the poster. This is essentially adding one’s post to other’s of the same topic by tagging or linking according to subject matter. If a user chooses to follow or “track” a particular tag, everything that has been tagged with that particular tag will appear in a user’s blog feed regardless of the user “ hearting” or not hearting an insitution’s blog (hearting is akin to “liking” a page on Facebook). For example, if a user chooses to track the “library” tag or the “medical” tag and you tag your posts as such, your posts will appear in that user’s feed without them having to specifically “heart” your institution.
Tumblr could be utilized by medical libraries to great extent because of the many millions of users that could be reached many of whom are already tracking the library and health tags. A quick search for the terms “medical” and “library” reveals that many thousands of others users are tagging and following these same tags. If your institution decides to adopt a Tumblr account a thorough and comprehensive tagging of your posts would ensure that your information would reach either a huge audience or a carefully selected one depending on your use of the tags.
There are only two steps to sign up for a free Tumblr account:
1. Go to http://www.tumblr.com/register
2. Enter your email address, a password, and your desired URL address.
After registration you will be taken to the “dashboard”. Here is what the dashboard looks like:
At the dashboard you can choose how and what you want to post. Explore the other customizable features under the Goodies and Account tabs.
For more information on Tumblr see the Thoughtshots video below.
[1] Karp, David (2010-03-08). “Has It Been Three Years Already?”. Retrieved 2010-05-31
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