Moving From Wordpress To Tumblr

I’ve been way more active on Google+ than my own blog web sites over the past few months. The reason is because I get way more feedback with Google+ than I did using Wordpress. I’d get a lot of traffic and visits, but not much interaction via comments and damn near zero activity from Twitter, even though I had links to my Twitter account everywhere. It’s not to say people wouldn’t comment on posts I made, but they seemed to only comment on things said that were these amazingly helpful, groundbreaking how-tos that I was the only person online to come up with. I’d post up a bunch of cool stuff, things I feel personally were far more interesting than the “How to fix” posts, but people didn’t really care. Or when someone would finally comment on something I felt was really interesting, they’d comment on it like two years later… when the topic’s become completely irrelevant.

Google+ however has been a different story. I’d post something up to Google+ and people, mostly seeing what I posted via the “near by” feature, would comment. And not just “I agree.”, but would engage me. Not just that, but when people would follow me, I’d see their “incoming” posts and I’d respond to something I felt was interesting. But Google+ doesn’t have the “park your posts here” functionality that web sites and blogs got.

So that’s what’s brought me to Tumblr. I’m gonna’ see if it’s worth switching to. What the apparent appeal is having a social network of people to interact with, like on Google+, but the platform structure of Wordpress.

Man are there some serious, fucked up issues with Tumblr. For one, you don’t own any of your own content like you do on Wordpress or Blogger. You can’t import *shakes fist* anything into it (so nothing from Aintageek.com can’t be brought in), you also can’t export anything. You also can’t run Tumblr on your own server. You also, via their iPhone app (that I’m typing this in) can’t upload pictures with text (serious??).

All the people hyping up Tumblr, I’m staring to think are full of shit, but, but… I’m willing to give it a shot and think it just might work because I’ve been wanting to change up the format of my blogging.

Before, the mantra was big, long things, post in a blog: medium, fluff things you post to something like Facebook: and completely instant, short things you post to Twitter. Well I don’t like Facebook or Twitter… but typing up short little things or sharing a web site or photo on a typical blog web site seemed overkill.

That’s where Tumblr may come in handy. They actually encourage both long and short posts. Not only that, they also encourage resharing of posts and links or whatever from other Tumblr users or anywhere. See, I like that. This post is going to be crazy long, like a typical blog post I guess… the ones you do once or twice a week as your entire activity.

But lately, some of my favorite blogs are one’s where people post up little things here and there, and do it throughout the day, alongside their long posts. And that’s where Tumblr could be the perfect catalyst. Instead of the old school method of “Make sure your blog is on track with a unified message”, I can just use it for whatever. Make the long posts, like this one, probably follow the same lines of regular blogs, but then use it for the small things I’d do with Google+ or personal emails to my close group of friends.

In all, it’s not really the technology that has to change, just the mentality. It don’t gotta’ be Tumblr, it can be Wordpress too… but I’m giving Tumblr a trail run because for all it lacks, it has the social element. I don’t want it to be like it was before, where I’d post up something small but crazy funny and have like no feedback or input. And I wanna’ interact with other people too, but within the same social system (such as Tumblr).

It’ll be interesting to see if Tumblr will be the platform for me. JbB