Malcolm Bastien

What The Heck Makes Tumblr a “Designed” Company

I’m asking this question based of a statement made in a popular blog post that was published two weeks ago, Why Tumblr is kicking Posterous’s Ass.

The article from what I can see only references Tumblr as a Designed company because it doesn’t have as many features which for Posterous makes it a bit confusing with all the different things you can use the platform for. It also shows how Tumblr as a nicer and simpler login screen.

But that just doesn’t settle with me completely.

What do you think makes Tumblr a Designed company, and to that regard any more designed than Posterous?

Reblogging - Not So Much

Been feeling recently as I look over my Tumblr stream that reblogging is both a really good idea, and something that is a big crap-shoot to whether it improves my Tumblr experience or adds less desirable stuff to my stream.

Of course sharing interesting content in a more active way than just Liking a post is a great idea, it makes a lot of sense to help move content around on this massive platform, but when you see things that are 4x reblogged it gets ridiculous.

I don’t know what to say about reblogging besides I think it’s a bit more logical that maybe it’s the implementation that reblogs a post in it’s entirety that is too much. Or maybe it’s even the idea that people reblogging other people’s reblogs that adds that visual overhead to it.

In the end the only reason I bring it up is because Tumblr makes it so easy to reblog stuff that it’s easier to populate your own blog with rebloged content then original stuff. When I look at my Posterous Reader it’s a vastly different experience, and the largest reason for that is absolutely because there is more original content.

Have I Not Explained It All Yet?

You may have noticed a lot of talk from me lately dealing with the specifics of Tumblr and of Posterous. You may have also noticed that the content is coming out from my Tumblr site (www.malcolmbastien.com) more so than my other blog www.openmode.ca. The reason for all this was I wanted less, so that I could blog more.

I love Wordpress, I love having my own data, and I love using open source software. But what I want is a smaller tool, something I don’t have to concern myself with plugins, or theme updates, or paying for hosting every year. My move over to Tumblr as my full-time blogging gig is for the same reasons that people feel more productive after they have a cleaner workspace, it focuses their attention, and I want my attention focused as much as possible on publishing new content.

I had built my blog into a position where I would really only publish long posts, I wanted to push myself (as lame as that sounds) into pushing out shorter content more regularly, to “re-blog” content from other Tumblr blogs, from my Disqus comments, and to publish more posts that were simply links, videos, images, or “interesting” things. It’s that focus on different sorts of publishing that created a lot of the tension on deciding between Tumblr and Posterous.

I’m not going to be using my Tumblr for the space between a real blog and Twitter. It’s all going here (in the case of Open Mode anyways).

Why not try it with me?

Do you realize how fast it is to start a blog using Tumblr? Putting something together with a nice theme, Disqus comments, Google Analytics, RSS and Twitter feeds is all something you can do in the span of an hour.

Go. Do it now.

Being Obsessive Is Part of The Fun

My last post was a whole big comparison that I spent more than a day on (for doing all the research) about the general pros and cons of Tumblr vs Posterous.

Now, I really really like Disqus for my commenting. For the past year even I’ve been using external, third party commenting systems on my other blog, openmode.ca (malcolmbastien.com “classic”). I just don’t think I can switch back.

I find that without the richness that Disqus provides, both commenters and myself lose out. Try to find a blog posting with more than 11 comments in a regular commenting system that doesn’t try to hack in comment replies into it, where people who can’t contribute choose to just type in “+1 to Martin” instead of commenting, or when conversations become fragmented.

In addition to all the points above both Disqus and IntenseDebate have become very good at giving a commenter identity on the web and the choice/power to comment in many different ways, and to extend their comments onto the social web with various options for doing that as well.

In short, my internal dialogue is about complete as I choose to shift most of my blogging activities over to Tumblr.

I’ll be missing out on the very interesting and innovative new life-streaming that Posterous is bringing (really bummed about this). But I’ll also get to keep using my comment enhancing partner Disqus (hopefully also a beneficial in net to the blog).

To be honest Tumblr does have a very rich and complete iPhone app. The Tumblr app does lack the amazing photo gallery feature of the Posterous app, but it has all it’s bases covered which I like and which gives it a very nice dashboard/homebase sort of feel.

I think the more I blog about blogging, then maybe the more other people will actually blog and spend less time on Twitter (in someways the internet’s new idiot box).

I feel like I’m rambling. I’m done.