Tumblin' in the Wind

Over the past two weeks or so I've been using Tumblr a lot. I'm sure I don't need to explain what Tumblr is to you, but for any readers who have been living under particularly large boulders, it's basically a blogging site, a rival to Blogspot I suppose (shhh, don't tell them I've defected). There are a lot of differences between the two sites, and rather than pick one over the other I've ended up using them both for different things.

Blogspot is a much more professional service. The layouts it offers you for your blog are arranged in a much neater, easier-on-the-eye fashion. It's a similar story for extra pages; the 'Doctor Who: Re-Incarnated' and 'Friday Night Who UK' tabs at the top of this blog are a lot easier to find than the cramped list of links on Tumblr. The archiving system on Blogspot stands out most emphatically as the better one; Tumblr's archive is a slapdash, chaotic mess of posts set out roughly in rows, whereas Blogspot's dropdown list is really easy to navigate through. Blogspot lets you create a 'proper' blog, so you can write reviews, essays, or just ramble on about the comparative benefits of Tumblr for half an hour. *Cough*

But just because Tumblr is a bit more of a makeshift system, doesn't mean it isn't useful. Whereas Blogspot is all about quality, Tumblr gives you quantity. So far in the six months I've been using this blog, I've made around 35-40 posts. My total number of posts for Tumblr at this very moment, however, is 154. Tumblr is all about quick, easy blogging; just as Twitter is a faster, more compacted social network than Facebook, so Tumblr is a faster, more compacted blogging platform than Blogspot. I think this is mostly down to Tumblr's 'reblog' feature - again, you almost definitely already know what this is, but for clarity it's a feature that allows you to repost somebody else's blog post on your own blog. So, for example, if somebody posts a funny picture, you can reblog that picture and it appears on your Tumblr page, for all of your followers to see, under the caption of '(Your name) reblogged this from (Person who made the funny picture)'.

Tumblr is more suited in general, I think, to shorter posts. The majority of the posts on Tumblr are images or GIF files, and most of the text posts are only a couple of sentences. It's almost like a halfway mark between Twitter and Blogspot, because you can note down a couple of thoughts that would be impossible to encapsulate in 140 characters, but not enough to fill a proper blog post.

Because the two different sites fit different niches, I'm going to keep using both of them for different things. This blog will continue unabated as normal; if for whatever reason you can't stand Tumblr, don't worry, I'm not going to start moving my content over to there instead. But I am going to be using Tumblr if I ever have an idea or an observation to make, and I want to share it but it's just a couple of lines long, so it would be worthwhile checking my page out. Oh, and I'll also be reblogging lots and lots of Misfits GIFs, because there is no good reason not to.

The point I'm trying to get to, which is basically what this whole post has been leading up to, is 'hey, I have Tumblr, go follow me on Tumblr.' And, without further ado, here I am on Tumblr. I will try and find a space to put a permanent link to it somewhere on the sidebar of this blog, so newcomers will always be able to find me on Tumblr, but for now, you'll have to just cope with this.

Thank you very much for putting up with yet another floaty, dreary blog post that doesn't really contribute anything to anyone. I promise, honestly, the next post will be something constructive like a book review or something, and won't have the word 'Tumblr' in it at all. For today, however, this is all I've got. Thanks for reading.

PS: I believe I may have broken the first rule here (the first rule of Tumblr is don't talk about Tumblr), but I won't tell if you won't.