//December 18, 2010//
December 5, 2010 will be the date that people craved on their head (or maybe heart) as the milestone of 2010. Yes, it is the damn date when Tumblr went down. The site has been down for 24 hours, the longest outage of this company’s history. People cursed. Some made this.
The statement says it all. Tumblr has becomes a crush for more that 11 million people. The popularity has gained Tumblr a die-hard fans and loyal followers. Today, the internet next big thing already has more than 11,039,276 users and more than2,357,992,341 posts (per December 18, 2010).
Behind the curtains, meet the internet prodigy Mr. David Karp (http://davidslog.com). In 2007, while people hyped up with the needs of connecting with other people, Karp backed up a little step. He believes that blogging is still the ultimate weapon to approach people online. Amazed by the tumblelog (according to Wikipedia is a variation on traditional blogging that favors very short, mixed media posts with little or no commentary),Karp then launched Tumblr.
“Is Karp the only panelist drinking a beer? Respect.”
— Kristina Weise
Like any other internet wonder kid, Karp is a drop out. I dare say that Karp is the ultimate representation of internet geek nowadays. At 11, he read HTML for Dummies. At 12, he was homeschooling. At 14, he drops out school. At 21, he started Tumblr. At 22, he awarded Best Young Tech Entrepreneur 2009 by Business Week. Now at 24, he’s still getting started. Then we called it awesome.
Ah so, let’s getting started to know about Tumblr!
Tumblr is a microblogging platform that satisfies your need to go blogging in easiest way people could imagine. The tagline defines the website itself “The Easiest Way to Blog”. Starting from the registration process, you’ll be amazed by how fast the site redirects you to a new perspective of blogging.
As you can see, the only thing they need is the 3 basic forms, your e-mail, password, and the name of your blogs. It is like spelling A, B, C.
Tumblr then introduced you to their Dashboard. They categorized what people basically doing when they blog or they want to share something. Tumblr defines 7 distinct types of post. A text, a photo, a quote, a link, a conversation, an audio, and a video. You can easily choose which type of post you want to blog and considered it done, Tumblr has already made a custom display from each type of the posts. That’s what I called technology.
What makes Tumblr more fun is their ability of customization. While others blogging platform, like WordPress and Blogspot offers you beautiful gorgeous layout template that requires some PayPal to customize. Tumblr made it for free. You can choose a layout (they called it ‘Theme‘) and start to customize your blog peacefully, from background color to font size, from the text to the header. If you want to give some more money on board, you can choose some premium theme from Theme Garden and voila, is yours truly.
Many have said that Tumblr is for people who want to keep peace between Facebook and Twitter. Although I don’t want to agree to the statement, it’s becoming true each day. Like Twitter, Tumblr allows you to follow certain people you love. Singer, likeKaty Perry, Hayley Williams and John Legend or starlet like Dianna Agron have made a pact to be loyal with Tumblr. An artist, a web designer, a fashion lover, you’ll find many have attracted to the gold Tumblr has offered. Like Facebook, Tumblr is addictive. The easy-to-use and easy-to-publish ability already helped many illiterate-HTML transformed themselves to techno whiz.
However, Tumblr is still a toddler. It’s still 3 years old now, it’s still growing teeth and learning to walk. Year ago, Tumblr still has cons about their commenting system. Back in the days, Tumblr has only 2 ways to show affections to others (besides ‘Follow’-ed them). The first one is the ‘Like’ button, the red heart shaped button does the same job like giving a ‘thumb’ on Facebook or ‘ijo-ijonya, Gan!’ on Kaskus.
The second one is the most popular used button on Tumblr. Drums roll, here comes the ‘Reblog’ button. Reblog has the same function as Re-Tweet, is a re-ish. A repetition, a doppelganger of a post. But like a doppelganger, they have extra. You can add an icing on a cake, a topping for an ice cream. Some busy people type : “True.”, “I heart it.” below the post. Some were serious, typing some lines of admiration. Both ways works cool enough, since the spirit of microblogging is to blog something in a short lines, or even short words.
But unlike Facebook, Tumblr needs certain steps to comment on your friends’ post.Disqus then came to rescue, you can add a commenting system by installing it on your theme. Now it’s being inconsistent, it’s not being easy anymore. Then, the staff brings out joy. They add the ‘Reply’ button so people can start typing a short comment after someone’s post. Now, they even add the ‘Ask Anything’ section so you can gather feedback from your reader.
Like TypePad, Tumblr is well known by its mobileability. You can start texting or e-mailing your post from any mobile phone. Don’t bother to ask but sure it now available in iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. For an even mobile person, Tumblr can make a record of your voice and make it an audio post by calling to a certain numbers. How awesome…~
For people who have serious urgency to post and keeping the audience attracted, Tumblr has a feature of ‘Queue‘. You can automatically publish your posts on a designated interval. It’s like you let Tumblr freed your posts’ wings and let them loose to fly.
There’s more awesomeness to write by starting a review about Tumblr. Now I already up to 1000 words and still counting. So, I’ll let the website speaks for itself or you can read a 30 reasons why you’ll love Tumblr.
The thing is, we should salute Mr. Karp for his idealistic of a web free advertisement. He believes to make a good website, you don’t need to sell your soul to devil. And if Mr. Karp wants to keep the idea alive, I think it will be best to start monetize Tumblr the way WordPress did.
For me, Tumblr is still my golden child, although I love the way Notepad keeps haunting me for its algorithms of CSS and HTML. But I have to admit that Tumblr made blogging comes back to its true from, the way blogging was meant to be.
Footnote:
How time flies. Back in the days, Tumblr still has a Tumblarity feature. It says how active you are on Tumblr, it’s like a measurement of how loyal you are with the site. But now, the Tumblarity was once a history. It’s now only a good memory about having a nice best friend that reminds you how many cans of Cola you’re already drink in one shot.
My favorite Tumblr site nowadays: http://kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com. Oh it’s so damn hilarious!