Tumblr is the next big thing

Tumblr, the pop­u­lar blog­ging soft­ware, is a hos­ted blog­ging ser­vice that enables users to post notes, audio, video, pho­to­graphs, quotes, links and con­ver­sa­tions all in one place. Not a full blog­ging sys­tem like WordPress or MovableType and not a micro-​​blogging ser­vice like Twitter, Tumblr is, I believe, a middle-​​ground between the two. I believe this to be the next big thing. Here’s why.

Internet users of today are part-​​taking in a social web, con­nect­ing and inter­act­ing with other inter­net users on a global scale. This has caused users to want to write more fre­quently, let­ting oth­ers know what they are up to via status updates on vari­ous social net­works. In addi­tion to writ­ing more fre­quently, users seem to be writ­ing less in many respects. Shorter snip­pets of con­tent, designed to com­mu­nic­ate in as simple a way as pos­sible (140 char­ac­ters, as a pop­u­lar example) the mes­sage that they are wish­ing to share. Due to this shortened nature of con­tent, users are also shar­ing more pho­to­graphs and con­tent of dif­fer­ent types, enabling the same level of com­mu­nic­a­tion through an altern­ate medium.

In addi­tion to the above, vari­ous fea­tures are become more common-​​place on social net­works, such as a stream of updates by users to which you are con­nec­ted, as well as status updates and con­nect­ing with other users in the first place.

Enter Tumblr.

Tumblr, as men­tioned above, enables users to share inform­a­tion of vari­ous con­tent types with other users. Reblogging (sim­ilar to retweet­ing on Twitter), a con­tent stream of posts by friends and a cus­tom page theme are all built-​​in fea­tures. Users are able to setup a free Tumblr blog (hos­ted by Tumblr as well), which can be up and run­ning in under 10 minutes. Tumblr posts can also eas­ily be shared via Twitter at the click of a button.

With new fea­tures and updates to the sys­tem released on a reg­u­lar basis, Tumblr is also show­ing signs of progression.

From a developer’s per­spect­ive, the Tumblr API is clean and easy to under­stand. This enables the read­ing, writ­ing, updat­ing and gen­eral man­age­ment of one’s Tumblr blog from an out­side resource, such as your WordPress blog.

Therefore, in con­clu­sion, if you want to write and don’t need a huge blog (or don’t know how/​want to go through the pro­cess of set­ting one up), get your­self a Tumblr blog. After all, it’s the next big thing.

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