corilannam | Am I even using the world tumblr correctly? I am so old.

I'm not even sure what a tumblr is for. From where I sit, it looks like a blog, except that you can't leave comments.

-J

I... think you can leave comments? It's just that nobody does. I think.

I honestly thought it was a flickr-type photo service until someone corrected me fairly recently. I never had much use for it, but I recently found a couple of interior design tumblrs I'd like to look at sometimes, so I decided I might as well figure the thing out.

I have never found a way to leave comments. Just 'likes' or whatever, and then you have to have your own tumblr account. Bleagh.

I do follow one tumblr blog via RSS feed, like any other blog. I find the lack of comments thing irritating, but I'll follow anyone who's got interesting stuff to say that I want to read.

-J

Yeah, I don't find it particularly useful as a social networking platform because of the lack of interactivity. When I hear people talking about fandom potentially leaving LJ/DW for tumblr I just wonder...how?

As a general blogging platform, the lack of comments (or at least ease of commenting, since I haven't figured out if you can comment even with an account) does hurt it. Comments are usually where I find the most useful information in a blog. People are still flocking to it, though, so I suspect for many users, the lack of interactivity is not a deterrent and might even be attractive.

the lack of comments (or at least ease of commenting, since I haven't figured out if you can comment even with an account)

I hadn't looked before, but I just went to one and clicked on the "0 comments" link on a recent post, and it gives you text box to comment in.

ETA: and now I see Lydia's comment about editing them in from Diskus or whatever, and...yeah.

I think that "social" is coming to mean "out there to be seen," and less "engages directly with other people". Or something.

Edited 2011-10-13 22:30 (UTC)

Apparently people *can* enable comments on their tumblrs, but most don't.

Aha! That's good to know.

Do you have a concept of why people don't? (And why people use tumblr blogs instead of old-fashioned Blogger or Wordpress blogs in the first place?)

-J

Not really. Well, I think they use Tumblr rather that those other platforms because it's very, very easy to post different kinds of media, and because it's more social than the other two (in the sense of being able to subscribe to people's Tumblrs easily -- all blogs have RSS, but Tumblr packages all your subscribed tumblrs right there on your Dashboard). As for the comments, I'm not sure but I don't think they were available at first. Now they're available but apparently not on by default, and I suspect people are used to using Tumblr without them so they just don't think to enable them.

ETA: Actually, you have to kind of hack comments in by adding Disqus, and not all themes support it. So, yeah. Most people aren't going to do that.

Edited 2011-10-13 21:15 (UTC)

Hmm. I'm not sure I'd say that being able to subscribe to a blog more easily makes that blog "more social," expecially given that you can't freaking comment on most of them. But then I am apparently an ornery old cuss who misses the heydey of blogging. ;)

-J

It's more ... I don't know, network-y? I'm not much of a Tumblr user myself, but I use Twitter and it seems like it has some similarities (except that you can *reply* on Twitter). I just don't think Tumblr's meant to be a conversation as much as "a bunch of people sharing cool things they made and/or came across with the world." (And then NOT TALKING ABOUT THEM, which is the part that drives people like you and me nuts.)

Ahhh, that explains a lot, including why I knew I'd seen commenting available on tumblrs before, when it doesn't seem to be possible on most of the ones I'm looking at now. Glad I'm not crazy!

You can't really leave comments. You can reblog something and add a comment, but this requires you to reblog it, and you might not want to reblog everything you might potentially comment on, so that's a hindrance. You CAN "reply" on some posts (that end in a question mark) if the person who made the posts enabled replies, and even then their settings might stop you from replying if you are not following them or something. But yeah, the main forms of interaction are a) reblogs, b) likes, and c) ask box. None of which are really the same as a comment. (And people can also disable others from leaving them messages in the ask box, which is not linked to specific posts anyway.)

I basically use my tumblr to post whatever random things I am enjoying at the moment. Mostly I use it to reblog pictures I like. So I use it more for my own personal enjoyment rather than for anyone to view/follow it. I guess it is more like a personal diary which I do not intend for others, whereas my DW/LJ are more focused on interacting with friends. (However, that is definitely not how everyone uses their tumblr. Many ppl are focused on sharing things or on getting as many followers as possible.)

There is a large fandom presence on there, but the predominant types of activities are not those on DW/LJ. Mainly there is a lot of photoset/gif posting/reblogging. Many of the ppl who do fandom things on there are new to fandom, may or may not have a DW/LJ account (many don't), and want faster content delivery (new pictures on every refresh).

In addition to fandom-oriented tumblogs (of which I don't think you share my fandom interests so you probably wouldn't be interested), here are some trans/queer/kink/porn tumblogs I like:
http://nakedpeople.tumblr.com/
http://leathermen.tumblr.com/
http://thewomaninsideme.tumblr.com/
http://queerlysf.tumblr.com/
http://prettykinkythings.tumblr.com/
http://freshlycharles.tumblr.com/
http://dishevelleddomina.tumblr.com/
http://333images.tumblr.com/
http://colorfulqueerdom.tumblr.com/
http://amosmac.tumblr.com/
http://ireensarrows.tumblr.com/
http://tiemeup.tumblr.com/ (sadly this one hasn't been updated in like a year)

Thank you for the awesome explanation of how it all works! That's exactly how I intend to use my tumblr as well -- just to keep track of the random interesting things I see.

And thanks for the blog suggestions -- I can't wait to look at them (although I probably will wait until I'm not at work, at least *g*)

Am I even using the world tumblr correctly? I am so old.

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