Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Tech Corner Post: Tumblr



Written by Laura vanTuyllvanSerooskerken
            Blogging is a kind of social media spectrum—on one end, Twitter allows its users to create micro blogs of 140 characters or less. On the other end are sites such as WordPress that foster long, thoughtful posts. Tumblr is right in the middle of this spectrum.
Tumblr is a social media platform in which users create posts sharing different kinds of media. Users can create text, link, video, picture, audio, quote, and chat posts. Users can search for and track “tags” and follow other users on Tumblr. Once User A follows User B, User B’s posts will show up in User A’s “dashboard”, which functions much like a Facebook news feed. The users that show up in a Tumblr dashboard are like friends on Facebook, although a user cannot accept or deny someone following them.  
When someone tracks a tag, they mark that tag in a list and can go to it whenever they like. Users can “re-blog” posts from tags or from other users, whether they follow them or not. Once a user re-blogs something, it shows up in their dashboard and on their blog.
According to The Realtime Report, Tumblr grew from 4.2 million visitors in July 2010 to 13.4 million in July 2011—Tumblr grew 218% in a year. Fifty percent of the site’s visitors are under age 25. In fact, people ages 12 – 24 are twice as likely to use Tumblr as the average Internet user. 
Tumblr can even be used to promote business. Because Tumblr is designed to create fast posts, it’s perfect for a brand or company to promote a new product or service. If users like a post, they can like it, as one might on Facebook, or they can re-blog it so that it shows up on their blog, as well as the dashboard of all their followers. They can even tag it so that it shows up in the various tags on Tumblr.
PRDaily has even affirmed that it’s worth it for companies to invest in Tumblr. Tumblr can be an effective social media tool. For public relations, it would allow firms to highlight articles about their organizations, sharing organizational multimedia, and even host an online newsroom as many other uses.


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