5 Reasons Tumblr Has Me Hooked Now

Earlier this week I expressed my Tumblr grievances in a post about 5 Reasons Tumblr Doesn't Have Me Hooked Yet. Well now the tables have turned. That's right - I'm a born again Tumblr enthusiast and, although I still think that Tumblr could be even better if they responded to some of the issues I pointed out in my earlier post, I'm hooked! Before I get into the reasons why I've been converted to Tumblr fandom, I just want to reiterate some of my issues with the site. The fact that I'm starting to like Tumblr does not, in any way, erase the fact that I think the site could do well with a few changes. The things that irk me about Tumblr include the fact that the interface is a little hard to navigate at first, the lack of comments, the lack of an easy way to mass-search for all of your friends that are using the site, the downtime and the lack of analytics. That being said, I am starting to realize the positive things about Tumblr as well. Read about them below. Awesome For Meeting People With Shared Interests Within only the first few days of actively using Tumblr I realized what an amazing place the site is for meeting new people who share your interests. In days I started getting messages from people saying they liked my project (I'm working on my New Year's Resolution to do 52 Creative Projects in 2011), sharing their own projects with me and giving me inspiring ideas for projects I can take on throughout the year. Tumblr is an amazingly creative community with all sorts of people with all sorts of interests. It's a great way to discover the people with the same interests as you, get in touch with them, inspire one another and share your work, regardless of your niche. Great Viral Possibilities I started following a few creative people on Tumblr and, in looking through my feed, I was struck by the huge numbers of "likes" and "reblogs" that some of the posts were getting. Hundreds of people were liking and sharing posts with their friends - a whole lot more than you see liking people's photos and videos on Facebook or retweeting people's tweets on Twitter. I'm sure that these people have put a lot of time into promoting themselves in order to get followers, but I was really struck by the great viral potential Tumblr offers if you put in the work and have really good content. Easy To Manage Multiple Blogs Our editor Neil Vidyarthi tuned me into another great thing about Tumblr - it makes it really easy to manage multiple blogs. I've only got one Tumblr for now. However, I think that the way that users are able to create multiple blogs and manage them all from a single dropdown menu is great. You can potentially create a bunch of different Tumblr blogs, each to represent a single interest (i.e. videos, social media, dogs, bologna sandwiches) and easily switch between them to add content. Quick & Easy Updates It's really quick and easy to update your Tumblr, which is another great thing about the site. In a few clicks you can add a Text post, a Photo, a Quote, Link, Chat, Audio file or Video. At first I found it frustrating that Tumblr kept all of these types of media separate. However, I'm starting to think of Tumblr as less of a blogging platform (in the WordPress/Blogger sense) and more of a place to tumble together and share media. A single picture, video or quote may get more likes and reblogs than a full blog post. And if I want to create something more substantial I can always write a post on my personal blog in WordPress and share the link on Tumblr. It's also nice that Tumblr makes it easy for users to post without having to visit the Tumblr website. You can post from your mobile phone or device or even post directly from your email. When you sign up with Tumblr they send you an email address where you can send text, photos, quotes or MP3s and they will appear on your blog. I think that's pretty cool. Italian Sports Car-like Charm I have to attribute my last reason that Tumblr has me hooked now to Social Times reader Stephen Moegling. Stephen commented on my somewhat anti-Tumblr post that, "Tumblr has an Italian Sports Car-like charm to its look and feel; I found any number of off the shelf templates that I loved." I totally agree. Okay, maybe it sounds a little shallow, but one of the most important things for me is that my blog looks good and Tumblr has a load of awesome templates. Of course, some of the best templates cost money, but most of the free ones are pretty great too. There's something about Tumblr that says, "Hey, look at me! I'm cool, I'm hip!" that WordPress, TypePad and Blogger just don't express. So even though I'm not giving up WordPress for now, Tumblr is a nice new addition that makes me feel pretty darn good about myself. What's your take on Tumblr? Are you a fan, or still not convinced?

Social Pro Daily

5 Reasons Tumblr Has Me Hooked Now

Earlier this week I expressed my Tumblr grievances. Well now the tables have turned. That's right - I'm a born again Tumblr enthusiast. Find out why after the jump.

Megan O'Neill

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Megan O'Neill