Coconut Headphones

Tumblr is in a category of sites called “microblogging”, which, depending on who you talk to, may or may not include Twitter, but probably includes Posterous.

Essentially these sites allow you to rapidly create blog postings and can be thought of as “blogger 2.0” websites.  It’s interesting that old ideas on the internet often come back around for a second, and better run..

Although I had vaguely heard of it,  someone recently insisted to me that Tumblr is the “next big thing”, so I thought I’d check it out for myself.  I was astounded when I checked trends.google.com – look – more people are searching for the term [tumblr] than they are for [wordpress].  When you compare the searches to searches on the term [twitter]  it’s somewhere around 1/7 the size – which means – it’s already HUGE in comparison to most social media startups.  Searches for the terms [digg] and [stumbleupon] are much lower.

I just created a blog entry using tumblr (a “tumblog” as it’s called), and I must say, I was *shocked* at how easy it was – it literally took just a few seconds.

Clearly online marketers cannot afford to continue to ignore tumblr for much longer; so below I have included a guest posting from the anonymous tumblr user who tipped me off  and has agreed to give us her take on it.  After you’ve gotten the lowdown from our guest, you can see what tumblr blogs look like by viewing her blog at:
myownknight.tumblr.com

——————————————-  Guest Post Starts Here   ——————————————

Tumblr: the World of Microblogging

What is Tumblr? Is it yet another Social Networking system?  Another collection of small business blogging tools?  Or something better?   With Tumblr launching in 2007 came a new era and breath of life to the writing form known as “Microblogging”.   Sure, there were already many different services, platforms, and groups for blogging, but Tumblr combined an extremely user-friendly approach with sleek and stylish choices.

Started by David Karp, Tumblr now has over 3 million Users and averages 2 million posts daily.  Accessible from Computers,  iPhones,  and Blackberries,  Tumblr has an 85% retention rate, over twice that of the much lauded Twitter, proving that those who come, stay.

User-generated backgrounds and add-on applications make Tumblr easy to customize.   Apps range from Tumbltape, which provides a customized playlist of music you choose for your page, to the TumblrHelper that adds some useful AJAX features, such as creating post templates, adding a signature, and saving common settings such as fields, tags, “always add to queue”, and so on for for your tumblog posts.

To open an account, it’s as easy as filling out a simple form.   Enter your email, make a password, and choose a URL, which you can change later if you wish. And unlike other microblog sites that give you a URL like www.notrealwebsite.com/coconutheadphones, Tumblr gives you your very own subdomain, which is fantastic for ranking on Google Search.    For instance, if you want to rank for a long-tail keyword, you could have done what moviebarcode.tumblr.com and fakescience.tumblr.com did, and start up a blog on tumblr.    Of course, you still need links and so on, but for long-tail terms that don’t need much in the way of pagerank such as [purple flaming squirrels] or [blue chainsaws], a subdomain is a good jumpstart when you’re working on ranking for a term.

What is Tumblr, at its core, really about?  With social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, the focus is on keeping in touch with friends and family.  With sites such as Twitter, the focus on constantly telling people what’s happening in your life.   Tumblr is different; instead of focusing on connecting with people you know, or even  spilling your guts every two minutes as to what’s passing through your brain, Tumblr focuses on bringing original, relevant, or subject-related material to your subscribers.   With Tumblr’s search tool, it’s easy to access material about anything from lawn gnomes to comic strips.  With its blocking choice, its also easy to block any inappropriate or consistently mislabeled channels, so the content you see when you search is exactly what you wanted.

Another convenient feature: no one can see who is following you, preventing competitors from grabbing your list of followers and following them (essentially harassing them in the hopes they’ll be followed).  Because of this, followers on tumblr are more ‘real’ than many on Twitter (auto-generated marketing accounts trying to gain followers purely for ranking and traffic purposes – there doesn’t appear to be any automated Tumblr-follower programs available for sale – yet).  And depending on what template you choose for your Blog, you can choose whether or not viewers can see who you are following.

Welcome to Tumblr. A world of original content, verses worlds of personal drivel.  Welcome to the Future.

Guest blogger Ji.
www.myownknight.tumblr.com