As traditional, sit-at-a-computer blogging slowly passes away in the shadow of social networking services that cater to uniformity such as Facebook and Twitter, Tumblr stands out as a lesser-known platform that is attracting more than just the creative user, but those who are craving for simplicity – and speed – in the blogging experience.
At Feedback, we’re looking forward to watching Tumblr mature as a web and mobile content creation service, both as a personal platform and for businesses, particularly companies in the media world with a steady stream of words and pictures to post online. We believe that Tumblr’s power will be fully realized within the next year with new features and support that will give even the casual-est Internet users who may not have a lot to say a rather personable community to express themselves. (We would be remiss not to mention that New York-based Tumblr recently opened its second office here in Richmond.)
Founded in 2007 just as Twitter began collecting its initial momentum, Tumblr’s ease of use was pretty unparalleled considering the other blogging services that were out at the time. It made the blogging process simple, but on the back end, it also incorporated a feed where you can follow other “Tumblrs.” It looks much like a Facebook wall or Twitter stream, but it’s even more simplified – and that has made all the difference.
Composing posts with the Tumblr interface much easier than blogging services like WordPress or Blogger with the ability to categorize the types of posts that users make. For instance, if your post is expressed through words, you compose a Text post. If you found a great picture that you want to share, a Photo post would be appropriate. Not near a computer and want to leave some thoughts on your blog? Found a thought that someone else articulated so well that it stands without context? The Quote or Chat option can handle that with ease.
Tumblr is also made for posting from mobile devices, so if you’re an iPhone, BlackBerry or Android user, it’s never been easier to pop content up on the fly.
In addition to becoming a nexus for content of any nature — magazines like GQ, The Atlantic and the National Post have accounts on the service — Tumblr promotes popular and trending blogs within its own network based on recommendations of its users into the Tumblr Directory. Directories – which are in the process of being overhauled to be more easily searchable, according to Tumblr founded David Karp – is a listing of the most influential blogs categorized into keywords such as “historical,” “fashion,” “cute,” “gaming” and more. Every Tuesday, hundreds of users place their seal of approval on popular accounts and moderators add the best to the hall of fame-like status of the Directory.
The social aspect of the service has been simplified as well. All posts have a heart icon akin to Facebook’s Like button, and, as we opined earlier, such feedback is key to any online community. You follow users that have interesting thoughts by clicking the plus sign that appears in the top right corner of all Tumblr blogs. Reblogging, a term that’s become pretty common across the services, is less a sharing mechanic and more of a conversation tool. Posts become threaded conversations and not just a means to copy and paste someone else’s writings to your blog.
Today, the network has broken through the top 100 most trafficked websites on the Internet and continues to grow as it stands its ground against long-standing blogging and interactive media alternatives. Tumblr is also experimenting with a super cool ad model to maximize how attractive the service it is to users who might call it their new blogging home, too.
An "advertisement" on Tumblr, if you can even call it that. Tracked #cars tags aggregated onto a page sponsored by Top Gear. Sweetness.
The only ad campaign that I could spot is one highlighting the BBC’s Top Gear program in the #cars tag channel. It advertises the show, sure, but it does so in a way that you almost don’t notice. It’s nothing but a page full of car posts and pictures, curated by volunteers who pick the best posts to be delivered to those who wish to track the #cars tag. There are then two reasonable, standard-size banners opposite the content timeline that are not intrusive and ultimately relevant to just about every motorhead that might venture onto that page. But seriously, if you’re a fan of cars and you haven’t heard of Top Gear, I have doubts about your fandom.
Anyway, enough talking about it. I encourage you to check out Tumblr and get to know it before everyone else does.
usual it feels. The more we trick ourselves into essentially not understanding it. It becomes this amazing unicorn, and while we stare at it up on the hill, we barely notice all of the unicorns standing at the bottom of the hill around us.
23
Attention Spans and Paid Content in an Era of Hyper-24/7 News
by FeedbackAs someone who consumes a lot of news (and news about the news industry), I’ve recently felt like I’m on news overload.
To be honest, I’ve actually started falling behind in my knowledge of what’s happening in the world. And I can’t be the only one. After thinking about it (even mapping it out on some paper), I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not the news’ fault that I can’t pay attention to it all anymore. News is always happening; the problem is with technology.
Point is, we are constantly hounded in an era of not only 24/7 news coverage, but hyper-24/7 news coverage. We’ve always talked about how advertising is thrown in our faces all day long. Now it’s the news.
We’re all aware that we live in a time where simply pulling up a social network will cause an onslaught of the latest news coverage, giving us accessibility that we didn’t have even a year ago. Furthermore, if you own a tablet or iPad or browser-capable handset, you’ve likely stumbled upon the numerous apps available at your disposal for news consumption, with cool names like Flipboard or Zinio.
The concept of news services oversaturation is going to further complicate the news industry for media companies, some of which are starting to – for perhaps the first time in years – experiment yet again with paid-content models. A decade or so ago, when news companies hopped on the web and thought it’d be cool to charge for content or made people register to read, the model failed hard, due to the fact that people simply think news from a website should be free, they could perhaps find it elsewhere, or there was a paper with the same article nearby.
It’s a different world now. Newspapers and magazines aren’t sitting around homes or offices like they used to, giving publishers an open door to charge for content. If the process is kept simple, people will register on a website these days, but really only to allow them to comment or perhaps get a daily email or restaurant deal.
Yet asking people to pay could be an even harder sell this time around, as there are multiple ways to consume and various places to find news. Add on top of that our waning attention spans (who reads an entire article anymore?) and news being thrown at us constantly, and the idea of pressing the Pay Button for one story becomes one heck of a daunting click. The concept of sharing through interactive media is new, too. Media companies are seeing higher traffic to their websites because of shared articles through social networks, which means more impressions for advertisers. But you ever click through a shared news story only to find that you have to pay to read it? Back Buttons have never been hit faster.
Richmond-based Media General will be one of the first news companies in the nation to use Google’s new One Pass service, allowing the company’s flagship paper, the Times-Dispatch, to set terms and pricing on select content.
For most people, the concept of being charged for online news is a frustrating and an even alienating concept. Unfortunately for the publication paying lots of money to create valuable content, it comes off as greedy if other media outlets are giving away similar news for free. The money problem for newspapers is that they aren’t just paying the cost of running a website, they’ve still got to pay for the print edition’s production and the costs of running a newsroom. Online ad revenue can support a website, but it can’t support a website and a newspaper’s overhead.
Worse still is that the individual news outlet no longer matters to news audiences. Consumers aren’t going to a single place for the story anymore, they are visiting aggregators that have multiple versions of the same story for their choosing, using apps, or being referred by friends from their Facebook pages. Audiences already pay hundreds of dollars each year for Internet access and applications, they don’t have the attention spans they used to, and rarely does anyone sit down and read entire articles anymore. Many of these behaviors for consuming news are not what they were even six months ago.
News creators are focused on how much their news is worth. News audiences are concerned with how much their time costs. Hopefully, the two can meet in the middle.
-Jeff (@jephkelley) Note: Jeff was a business and tech reporter at the Times-Dispatch, reads it online and on its iPhone app, and has faith that the T-D and other media outlets can make the paid content model work.