Tumblr Or WordPress?
Clearly this blog is hosted on WordPress so I’m partial to the environment, but I’m playing around with Tumblr a bit and liking the format. As far as usage, they are neck and neck – as reported by Technology Inc. – both closing in on 20M users rapidly.
Many users prefer Tumblr due to it’s ease of use, ability to ‘quick publish’ via email, and it’s design flexibility. WordPress seems a bit more robust on the customization front to me, but may be more than most simple bloggers need.
In the news lately is a guest post by Steve Rubel (Twitter) on the The Next Web, on why he “….adopted a scorched earth policy, dismantled two blogs and jumped to Tumblr“. Basically saying that he feels Tumblr is at the center of the ‘Media Cloverleaf’ (image courtesy: Mashable) and is uniquely positioned to take advantage of a highly social, extremely engaged audience with the ‘connective’ tissue that ties in the major social hubs (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) with those traditional media outposts (CNN, BBC, etc) and emerging ‘tradigital’ pioneers (The Next Web, Sports Blog Nation).
Others – like John Battelle – renowned for his prolific blogging on his Searchblog, have chosen to stay true to their original blogging platform but add in a layer like Tumblr for specific purposes – in John’s case – photo posting. Judging by the photos John posts – he’s having more fun than all of us, and has one hell of a wine collection to choose from each evening…
What’s right for you? I’m experimenting – ala John, but have not made the bold move Steve made with his personal social platform of choice – yet. Stay tuned and please weigh in with comments.
Hey David – that’s not all from my collection! But I find Tumblr too closed and kind of an odd social system, to be honest. I like having total control over my platform, and I’ve found Tumblr to be kind of hard to break into. Apparently you have to spend a lot of time in the “dashboard” finding other Tumblogs you like, and then taking action around them (favoriting them, reblogging them, etc). And its approach (or non approach) to commenting is just broken IMHO.
That said, I do like the enviornnment for photos and the occasional serendipitous find. I think it’s going to start to open up and borrow the best of what WordPress et al have to offer, as well as start to connect in more robust ways to the “outside world.” And when that happens, it’ll be a real horse race for publishing platforms. Which is a good thing.