One of the challenges for me when I participate in these blogging challenges is that although I have three blogs they really have quite narrow parameters i.e. technology, reading and cooking. I am not complaining about that and it is exactly how I want those blogs to be. However, if I want to put up a photo (apart from Flickr), jot down a paragraph about the photo, or just make some general comments I really can't do it on my existing blogs.
One of the tasks I set myself for this #blog12daysxmas was to explore possibilities. In fact I didn't get very far with my exploring. For Day 3 of #blog12daysxmas I set myself up a Tumblr account. I know lots of people have been using Tumblr for ages but I guess I am just a bit slow. It was easy to set up a template and I experimented with a few of the free ones until I ended up which one I liked. It looks like an old-fashioned airmail letter and seemed appropriate for my Tumblr which is called Hecuba's Reflections: virtual comments winging their way to you. This automatically provided a link to my Twitter feed, my Tumblr likes and the Tumblr accounts I am following. I haven't explored if I can customize it myself but I should do that.
I like the way you can quickly insert a range of things from the top of the dashboard - text, photos, quotes, links, chat, audio and video. And I quickly discovered that I could link back from Flickr with my photos there or from Youtube with video. It took me a little while to work out what happened on the dashboard apart from composing as I had some difficulty working out how to follow people. But now that I am following a few I can see how everyone's post scroll through there and you can see the history of the posts and who has favorited/reblogged yours. Exploring Tumblr found me some really interesting visual sites to follow.
So I am sold on Tumblr. I think it is a great little tool for communicating and that there is some really interesting and creative stuff on there that is quite different from the regular blogpost. My main issue is that I can find very few friends on there. Maybe it is because very few are on Tumblr but I doubt it somehow. If you are on Tumblr and you want to visit me or follow me I am there as Hecuba's reflections.
3 comments:
It's great to see you and others starting to use Tumblr :) I've been a fan for a long time, and follow lots of interesting people across a variety of interests. I've blogged about it too - http://www.sallysetsforth.com/index/tag/tumblr
If you're interested in seeing how organisations use Tumblr, NYPL is a great example, along with a few US archives institutions.
P.S. You should probably change your link in this blog post to http://polyxena2.tumblr.com/ as the link you're using requires you to be logged in as yourself.
Thanks I have changed the link! We actually use it at work but I have never played with it. I am following NYPL already.
Sally just read your blogpost and almost sure I have read it before! Obviously I didn't take notice of it.
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