I thought for sure that Pinterest would have killed Tumblr. I find my tumblr stream too unfocused. With the specific boards in pinterest, it would seem that a user would be able to define exactly what they want to see. But it doesn’t quiet work that way as my pinterest news streams seems to be even more unfocused than tumblr. It’s a big spaghetti board of random pins.
I might give tumblr another try, as it might have more of a feeling of being focused where you just have one column of content. It’s also cool that brands are posting their content into verticals on tumblr. As Post Advertising writes in “Is tumblr doomed?“:
Vice Media started as a little indie magazine in Montreal and has blossomed into an international company with wide appeal and financial success. Vice’s success stems from a multichannel approach that includes websites, live events, a magazine and three “verticals” for art, music and technology, notably the Creators Project
However, even if I follow just Vice’s art vertical, it still appears in one single stream of all the other tumblr streams of various content.
I would like tumblr to allow users to create their own lists of tumblr accounts to follow. I find this immensely helpful in twitter as at certain times of the day I’ll check my Chicago Visual Arts list. Other parts of the day I’ll check my Digital Publishing list. My mind is better prepared to digest each of the content in these lists because they are focused. –something tumblr and pinterest need to learn.
Even though people tend to use it more for photos, I like the blog aspect of Tumblr. It just has a different feel than Pinterest. And while I think Pinterest is super-awesome, the Post’s predictions of Tumblr’s demise seem premature.
What ultimately needs to happen with social media are three things 1) Users need to post/write things into a specific category. 2) Blogs/pinterest/tumblr/etc need to allow readers to subscribe to specific categories. 3) These services need to allow the readers to organize what they follow into specific lists.
— Pinterest gets the first two correct, but not the third.
— Twitter gets the third, but not the first two.
— Tumblr doesn’t do any of the three.
— Blogs kinda do the first one, but it’s not an absolute. Someone can write a blog post without putting it into a category.
Publishers have long held too much power in forcing people to read everything. (Publishers in my definition include not only the people who post to pinterest, twitter, tumblr, blogs; but also the companies/websites themselves are publishers)
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