Friday, September 30, 2011

Using Tumblr for CMC

Decided to change it last second since two people already did the one I chose Almost.at.

Tumblr is a microblogging platform, which basically is a blog but with less words. Regular blogs are used for more well thought out posts while Tumblr is used for quick anecdotes, images or videos. Both allow comments, but a feature unique to Tumblr is to reblog somebodies post. Here's an example from the Washington Post's Tumblr , basically you can take from another persons Tumblr and add comments to it and share it with whomever follows you.

 The main comparison to Tumblr would be twitter. The differences betweent Twitter and Tumblr are very few, they both have follower system and there really is no way to see peoples account unless signed up, they have a direct link or they're searching. Tumblr has the ability to directly see photos and videos instead of clicking on something as Twitter does. Tumblr also has no character limit, so it's easier to share more information in one post instead of doing multiple posts on Twitter and possibly some other microblogger platforms.

As with any other online communication, it's somewhat hard to find people to talk to as not everyone is on Tumblr and you can use aliases. Finding Tumblrs to follow comes with time of using and if you don't devote some times, you may find it pointless as a way to communicate with people.

Tumblr now has more blogs than Wordpress.com [1] which is another blogging platform which is very popular, so it goes to show that microblogging is more mainstream than regular blogs for the ease of communication rather than writing alot. The Tumblr user base also ranges from companies to regular people to people who are just posting funny pictures. So there is a majority of different ways you can find information on there or put information out there. So Tumblr is very two way in terms of communication, you can give people comments or reblog their posts and also give people videos, images or text of what you think is cool or informative.

Tumblr is alot like the CMC tools already out there but its more about versatility in sharing information and how others can share that information. If you post something that's very informative or interesting, there's a possibility that people will know about it in multiple ways. It also goes the same way that if you find something informative/interesting you can let people know about it by reblogging it, liking it or commenting on it. It's an interesting way of communicating and it's getting more popular as we go along [2].


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