by engtech of Internet Duct Tape
Sometimes blogging applications like WordPress and Blogger are too much for what you want — they really are content management systems. Writing long-form content might not be your goal: perhaps you want to communicate with friends, or share links? Blogging has evolved into a culture of long-form articles. Sometimes all you want to do is put something on the web with the least amount of effort as possible. Here are a few sites that will help you do that: Facebook, Tumblr, StumbleUpon and Twitter.
What The?
- Microblogging refers to publishing very short status messages or updates of two to three sentences (etymology).
- Tumblelogging refers to publishing short-form, mixed media posts that can incorporate photos and videos.
Facebook – Microblogging and Tumblelogging
- Sign-up: http://www.facebook.com/r.php?r=102
- Example: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=831360579
Facebook – Pros
- Friends list — see updates from your friends
- Import friends from your email address book
- If your friends use Facebook then blogging on Facebook is the easiest way to write a blog they will read.
- It has one of the best systems I’ve ever seen for sharing photos between friends and identifying people in photos.
- Post messages using notes and tag friends so that they know you want them to read this.
- Shared links and video support. Facebook will automatically import a picture and description for the shared link and configure YouTube videos to play properly.
- Imports RSS feeds — as notes.
- Facebook applications — there are a million and one widgets to add to your Facebook page.
- Excellent private message support that even lets you email people from inside Facebook.
- Post by phone
- Surf by phone — the site is optimized for mobile phones, especially the iPhone
Facebook – Cons
- Walled garden — if your friends aren’t on Facebook then they won’t be able to read your blog, Conversely, it might be the simplest way to get non-bloggy friends to read your blog since they’re more likely to use Facebook than an RSS reader.
- Limited reach — you can’t reach people who aren’t your friend already
- Too many privacy settings confuse the user
- Facebook applications — there are a million and one widgets to add to your Facebook page, and a lot of them suck.
- No custom domain name support — you don’t own your URL
Tumblr – Microblogging and Tumblelogging
- Sign-up: http://www.tumblr.com/register
- Example: http://engtech.tumblr.com
Tumblr – Pros
- Best looking microblog tool — they hired one of the best web designers to design all of their templates and it looks amazing
- Photo / Video support — it understands how to style posts differently for photos, links, videos, quotes and conversations.
- Import RSS feeds — which means you can automatically integrate content from any other sites you use (photos, messages, book reviews, etc)
- Custom domain name support — if you own a domain name then you can map it to the service
- Full theme customization — there is a simple wizard for changing colours on existing themes, but you can get to the nitty gritty and change anything
- Friends list — show updated tumbles from other people who also use the site
- Import friends from your email address book
- Post by email
- Post by phone
- Surf by phone — the site is optimized for mobile phones
- Very simple and elegant.
Tumblr – Cons
- No way to send public or private messages to other users.
- No way to contact other users
- No email address book import of contacts
StumbleUpon – Tumblelogging
- Sign-up: http://www.stumbleupon.com/getstumble.php
- Example: http://ninetimessix.stumbleupon.com
StumbleUpon – Pros
- Truly excellent toolbar that integrates with Firefox or Internet Explorer
- It is very good at discovering new sites you’ll find interesting
- Very simple to share things you have “stumbled upon” with other people
- Potential to reach a huge audience — it is common for sites you share to reach 100s of other people
- Private messages between users
- Photo / Video support — but photos are limited in size
- Friends list — show updated stumbles from other people who also use the site
- Import friends from your email address book
StumbleUpon – Cons
- No mobile phone support (not that it would work well with the concept)
- Limited customization/template options
- No RSS import from other sites you use
- No custom domain name support — you don’t own your URL
Twitter – Microblogging
- Sign-up: http://twitter.com/signup
- Example: http://twitter.com/engtech and http://twitter.com/et
Twitter – Pros
- Friends list — updated messages from other people who also use the site
- Import friends from your email address book
- Private messages between users
- Post by phone
- Surf by phone — the site is optimized for mobile phones
- VERY simple to use
- 3rd party utilities — there are a million and one applications you can use to access Twitter other than the official web site.
- 3rd party import RSS feeds — through TwitterFeed.com
Twitter – Cons
- Short length — only allows for 140 character length messages, about two sentences.
- Design is ugly and inconsistent
- No embedded video or photo support
- Shared links are usually hidden by a URL shortener, and that makes it hard for people to know what you’re linking to ahead of time
- Not very many customization options
- No custom domain name support — you don’t own your URLlore
Jaiku and Pownce are a lot like Twitter but with more features. I won’t go into them in depth about them.
Summary
If blogging looks like too much work, then I’d seriously consider using Facebook or Tumblr as try as a microblogging service. They might satisfy your desire to communicate without adding as much overhead as traditional services like Blogger or WordPress. If you are looking at sharing your ideas and “finds” on the web then StumbleUpon is the best choice because it easily reaches a wider audience than even traditional blogging services. Twitter has its place as a public instant messaging service, but it doesn’t have enough gristle to satisfy in the long term.
What Other People Think
- WisDump compares Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, and Tumblr
- LifeHacker is a huge fan of Tumblr and thinks highly of StumbleUpon
- Web Worker Daily posts 10 things I hate about you, Facebook
- Why the Lucky Stiff recommends tumblelogs over blogs
- Dosh Dosh explains how to use microblogging to build traffic for your blog
Internet Duct Tape on Microblogging and Tumblelogging
- How to configure privacy settings on Facebook
- How to configure the privacy settings on Facebook applications
- How to fix StumbleUpon when you can’t submit new pages
- Exporting your Facebook status updates into Twitter
engtech blogs regularly at Internet Duct Tape. His latest post was Revolutionizing the Web with Firefox and Greasemonkey and The 3 Step Success Plan. Subscribe to Internet Duct Tape by 
RSS or by 
email.
Lorelle on WordPress 
33 Comments
I’m not familiar with Tumblr and Stumble Upon, but I use Twitter (sometimes in an unhealthy, addictive way). Another “con” is that it’s hard to find anyone there. Most of the time I’ve found my “friends” (or followers) because they have the Twitter feed on their blogs, or through other contacts.
You forgot to mention del.icio.us. With del.icio.us daily blog posting and the WP extension Del.icio.us Daily Post Formatting, I do a daily post with all the bookmarks I collected during the day, that get formatted in a very nice way. Have a look at one of my posts:
hombrelobo microblogging
Hello all,
It’s funny how I just did a post about a discussion some podcasters were having about this very same thing. I think that this microblogging and social networking environment are an important place in our blogging environment, is part of this whole new Web 2.0 thing and some love them, some hate them. My take on them is that we need to have a presence on all of them, whether we update them or not, if someone looks for me on any of them they can find me. That’s what all is about.
Great post Lorelle, I’m a fan of yours.
Luis
You must be joking. Seriously, after looking at all those things, I can honestly say that I’d never read nor subscribe to any of them.
I do use Twitter, mind you, to post a short “what am I doing now” to my own blog from my phone. And I’m a huge fan of social bookmarking.
And a lot of people use Facebook. I have too much self-respect to use it, personally, because everybody I know who uses Facebook is the kind of person whom I cannot have a serious conversation with.
StumbleUpon is not terrible given the toolbar and sharing bookmarks aspect, but I tried using it and neither got the point nor cared enough to continue trying to use it for more than an hour.
But really, never in my life have I ever seen anything as self-evidently stupid as Tumblr. Worthless stream of consciousness nonsense. If I knew the person in real life, then I’d perhaps care about their one-line ramblings. But if they can’t even be bothered to write complete paragraphs, then I can’t be bothered to care what they have to say.
Seriously, all this stuff will pass and die off as the people doing it lose interest in it. I mean, they obviously don’t have any interest in it to start with because it’s so close to “nothing” by design. So what’s to keep them doing it? What’s to keep them around to build up a reader base? People who actually have something to say are the people worth listening to, and reading.
Engtech, thanks so much for the great information to help us learn more about these blogging derivatives. I have to agree with Otto, that I just don’t have time for useless dribble or redundant babble, which is why I haven’t taken the time I should to at least learn about the pros and cons of these.
Now, you’ve done all the work for me. THANKS!
Thanks for the mention, Engtech. I just ‘tumble-logged’ this on StumbleUpon. 🙂
@Kathy:
Twitter added an “import addressbook” feature just yesterday. That might help you find friends who already use the service.
I find that Twitter has a much larger penetration with bloggers than ‘normal’ people. Out of my real life friends the only apps that have taken off are Facebook and StumbleUpon.
@hombrelobo:
I didn’t forget del.icio.us, but rather intentionally left it out. I’m a big time del.icio.us user and I use it to generate weekly link posts.
But now that I think about it, I was wrong to leave del.icio.us out. It does let you network / view updates from friends. It lets you subscribe to other users and send links to specific people… these are all features that the other sites I mention have.
@Luis:
In terms of “having a presence” — that’s why I’m a fan of sites that let you import RSS feeds so that you can create your presence without any additional work.
The focus of the article though, was more about using this services *instead* of blogging, rather than as an enhancement to blogging.
@Otto:
I think you missed the point — the focus of the article is that these services can be used for people whom blogging is ‘too much work’, either because of the time commitment. A lot of people do use blogging for posting videos / photos / short messages with very little long form content. What I am suggesting is that these sites might work better for them than traditional content management software.
“And a lot of people use Facebook. I have too much self-respect to use it, personally, because everybody I know who uses Facebook is the kind of person whom I cannot have a serious conversation with.”
Some of those people you “cannot have a serious conversation with” could be your girlfriend, parents, or relatives. People who may never “get” blogging, but you’d still want to share things with.
“Seriously, all this stuff will pass and die off as the people doing it lose interest in it. I mean, they obviously don’t have any interest in it to start with because it’s so close to “nothing” by design.”
As will any activity on the Internet. I have to agree that I don’t subscribe to tumblelogs and microblogs the way I would blogs. But that kind of proves my point that they’re different tools for different tasks. Because they are so much more stream of consciousness I read them by getting my toe wet when I want to.
I think things are more likely to die the more that they seem like “work” instead of fun. It’s about finding the right tool for the job, and for a lot of people it makes more sense to have a low maintenance web presence then to go through all the work and effort of building up a blog.
I’m sorry I got it all wrong. I’m more inclined in the idea of using microblogging tools to enhance my blog, not as the only option. Using microblogging tools to blog is not something that I agree with, I wouldn’t even call it blogging to twit on twitter all day. Nevertheless, great article engtech.
@Lorelle VanFossen:
I’ll concede that from a blogger’s point of view a lot of microblogging and tumblelogging is useless and redundant — but have you looked at what a lot of people write in their blogs? 🙂 The majority of people use blogging for posting videos, photos, short messages and clipping from other sites with little to no new or original thought.
The way we use blogs as information clearing houses, to spread ideas and have discussions is clearly in the minority. Which explains why there are 70 million blogs but few people read more than 100 of them with any regularity, and why there are less than 100 blogs with over 30,000 RSS subscribers (going by the FeedBurner numbers), and very few with more than 100,000 RSS subscribers.
I’m a strong believer in using the right tool for the right task, which is why I thinking microblogging and tumblelogging has a place. They are natural extensions of the way a lot of people already see and use blogging.
But what value do these have for someone who already likes and enjoys blogging?
Good question, and the quick answer is that if you’re already blogging then these sites are probably just time sinks (although maintaining a minimum presence using RSS import of your blog might be a good way to reach readers who don’t normally read blogs).
This is how I use them:
Facebook – photo sharing with friends and family, group messaging with real life friends. All of the value I’ve had with it is in connecting with people I already know face-to-face.
StumbleUpon – promoting content and discovering content.
Twitter – public instant messaging, relationship building with people I may never meet face-to-face.
Tumblr – lifestreaming and profile aggregation.
Delicious – bookmarking and generating blog posts.
@Maki:
Thanks Maki! I liked your article on how these sites can drive traffic to your blog.
@Luis:
I don’t think you got it wrong at all. Judging from the reactions in the comments my intentions didn’t come across in the post. 🙂
Problogger has a post today discussing how social media sites can be useful to bloggers: Explore a Social Media Site.
@hombrelobo:
I didn’t forget del.icio.us, but rather intentionally left it out. I’m a big time del.icio.us user (http://del.icio.us/engtech) and I use it to generate weekly link posts (http://internetducttape.com/tag/miscellaneous/best-of-feeds/)
But now that I think about it, I think I was wrong to leave del.icio.us out. It does let you network / view updates from friends. It lets you subscribe to other users and send links to specific people… these are all features that the other sites I mention have.
Oh no, I got the point entirely. What I was saying was that these “blogs” that consist of short messages and/or links, without any content of substance are not the kind of thing I’d read. Or that I think anybody would read, realistically. I mean, they’re fine if all you do is surf from random site to random site all day, but really, who does that anymore?
What do you mean by “could be”? I absolutely guarantee you that I cannot have a serious conversation with many of those people. And yes, quite a lot of them do use Facebook on a regular basis. I respect them less for it.
Can’t say that I want to share anything with Facebook users. Except, perhaps, laughter. At them.
Which is sort of where I was going with it. You subscribe to blogs. There are blogs that you read on a daily, weekly basis. You’re a long term reader, and you see the things that these people are saying on a continuous basis.
But these tools basically make it so that it’s really easy to say absolutely nothing. There’s no continued viewership. Your audience consists solely of people who probably already know you.
Okay, as a way to share small tidbits and links among your immediate circle of friends, I grant you, these are excellent tools. But to even remotely compare them to “blogging” is a bit in the realm of the absurd. They’re offshoots of blogging, I’ll grant you that. And it’s entirely possible that some aspects of them can be used to enhance existing blogs and such. But they’re very, very far from any sort of replacement for blogs and they’re certainly not blog-like tools. You can’t attract a large audience with them.
At most, these sorts of things are moving IM chatting online to websites and making them public.
I would argue that having a “web presence” means more than just having random shared links and pictures you find from your daily web surfing shared with the world. None of these Tumblr’s are a “web presence” in any meaningful sense of the term.
Also, if simply writing content is too much work for somebody, then they are not capable of constructing any sort of “web presence”, because you must actually have something to say in order for other people to be able to read it.
All I’m saying is that there’s nothing wrong with these services and ideas for what they are, but what they are isn’t much, and they aren’t going to last. I just don’t get why so many otherwise intelligent blog writers keep fawning over these rather silly (IMO) concepts.
Cool article, Engtech. For me, it couldn’t have come at a better time.
I’m in the process of integrating several things at once. I have a WordPress site for my radio show that I’m now using for additional content other than playlists, podcasts and the monthly charts. I wanted to find WP plugins that allowed me to crosspost with both Myspace and Facebook. Wordbook does a really nice job for Facebook (it’s a WP plugin/Facebook app combo), and the Myspace Auto Crosspost plugin for Myspace handles the job nicely. The best thing about them both is that postings on each site are links that are directed to the actual posts on my web site, which can increase traffic.
Though I’ve subscribed to Twitter quite awhile ago, the account just sat there with nothing to do. Somehow, I stumbled upon a WP Twitter plugin yesterday that sends a Twitter alert of new posts on the show’s site.
All-in-all, I think it’s highly beneficial, not to mention super-efficient, for all of these tools to allow for a single post to branch out to all of these external sites. I’ll explore the other options you’ve given in the article as well as via other’s comments to find out if they will be feasible at this time.
I really am looking forward to having my site become a much more useful and efficient site for all constituents involved.
Again, thanks so much for the useful info. Feel free to hit me up if need be. Peace.
They key to getting the job done is using the right tool for the job. Learning more about the various options out there that can help us do our job better is important. Thanks for helping us see the bigger picture on the benefits of these different social media, and helping us dispel some of the myths around them.
I both stumbled and tumbled this 🙂
I use both of those to highlight what I like on other sites. It helps the people who wrote them get some traffic I hope and since I integrate what I highlight this way in my personal blog via RSS it also gives visitors to that something else to check out, which cannot be bad either.
I would never be able to do what I like with any of these services, but they do offer opportunities to make more of what you do I think. A number of prominent bloggers seems to have discovered particularly tumblr and I don’t think it is without reason.
I’m personally branching into the tumblelog idea for my friends and family to keep up with our life, but I like WordPress too much to use someone else’s service.
I’m slowly converting someone’s stylesheet to use the Sandbox theme to display my WordPress blog like a Tumblr site (Basically different styles for each post category). I like having the flexibility of WordPress’s advanced features like comments, search, etc.
We’ll see how long the site last, but for now I’m having fun learning in between normal blog posts.
Just read your post. Quite interesting, I should say. Have you ever tried or even had a look at hictu? http://www.hictu.com I’ve been trying it in the past few days. It’s kind of a mix of microblogging and tumblelogging.
The whole point of micro blogging is to quickly have a snapshot of where people are, what they’re up to and what they are planning to do. Why say in 500 words what you can say in 200 letters?
The micro blog, like SMS, is popular and will continue to be so.
I’m not impressed with Tumblr, though I expected to be from the level of buzz and the fact that some highly experienced bloggers now have Tumblrs as well.
But.
It seems like they register them for cybersquatting reasons, try them out for a couple of days, and then leave them. That’s certainly what I did. Tumblr is lightning fast to start up, and yes, the themes do look good. I have yet to discover the real customization options, although I suppose they are there somewhere (so that’s a negative; how expert do you have to be to find this stuff?). I can’t even find out how you comment on the damn things. They are built for tiny brain dumps, not for connecting, and for this they seem to be well designed.
I teach blogging, and I won’t be teaching Tumblr unless, quite frankly and I am being 100% serious here, unless I get a class which has anger management issues and/or OCD. Because for the former, it drastically reduces their opportunities to get into fights, and for the latter it drastically reduces the number of things they can attempt to control. Unless some day I find that allegedly infinite customization option.
Hi, //engtech
I am trying a Tumblr as a way to post to WordPress by E-mail– that is, I often have brief links or “bits and pieces” which need mentioning but not discussing. Opening a deli or stumble window is too time consuming.
However, I cannot find on Tumblr how to do the email posting. Did you mis-speak above that it accepts E-mail posts or is there somewhere else i should look? (the set-up on Tumblr is agonizing. Black type on dark grey backgrounds and having to go through the tutorial instead of jumping in.)
@ Pam:
Hopefully engtech will have the answer, but until then, according to everything I’ve read, you can only post to Tumblr via a phone to an email address – it’s the phone connection that makes the difference, but I haven’t found an answer.
However, there is the QuickPost to Tumblr WordPress Plugin that allows you to post to Tumblr from your WordPress blog Administration Panels and the support contact information for tumblr is support@tumblr.com – the place to get the real answers on this. Posting by email should be a regular thing, especially if you can do so from your phone, so why not via straight email? Let me know if you find an answer if engtech doesn’t jump in.
@ Pam:
Tumblr lets you send posts to tumblr by email. Login and choose Accounts >> Goodies. They’ll show you your private email address you can send emails to create blog posts.
How are you closing the loop to send the post from tumblr to wordpress?
@ raincoaster:
The infinite customization options is under Accounts >> Preferences >> then customize your tumblelog. Click on “theme” and you have FULL access to modify your theme. You can add any javascript/flash widgets that your hearts desire.
Tumblr doesn’t support comments so far. What you see more often is people “reblogging” your post with some extra comments. However, it’s really trivial to add Disqus.com comments to your tumblr blog posts. It makes for a pretty nice comment system.
Here’s how comments look on my tumblr.
Here’s a cool feature you get from Disqus: forums based on your posts!
Ruby Eh Rake Rdoctask With All of the Options Stubbed Out.
So yeah, it’s not as newb friendly as wordpress/blogger because comments aren’t “drop dead simple” yet. But you can do some nice things with them and I like that you have full theme customization options and can add any widgets your heart desires.
So I don’t need a cellphone to get this to work? (hey, we’re lucky to have cordless phones and dial-up out here) —
“Tumblr even makes it really easy to post from your phone. Just add this special address to your cellphone’s address book and send in text, photos, and video:….”
Haven’t decided the close loop thing. I might try //eng’s pipes or just use the RSS feed back to the blog sidebar. If I can collect my Tumblrs in my GreatNews reader then I can maybe do a post of the latest Tumbld ones.
Hey, lookie, Lorelle, http://hlthenvt.tumblr.com/ It works! Now, I’ll have to figure out how tags might be incorporated
Lorelle, specific link to email trial is Tumblr Email Trial.
I love Tumbler! After making 2 blogs on Blogspot and only a handfull of views and aggrivation trying to figure out what to write, this seems like a perfect tool for me. Love your article, you are right on. Web 2.0 is such a mixed bag of communications and networkings. Different strokes for different folks is the bottom line here people. I use many sites for many different reasons, half the fun is just exploring what is out there. Yes, there are serious people out there who want to make money at something online, but I am not one of them. I like to discover sits and learn more about how everything changes so quickly online. Here is my intro to my tumbler and I will add the link after it. I hope you will come and see how it can be a fun way to express yourself. “Microblogging Mama”
My micro blog is about a few of my favorite things, memories of my younger years, and any other interesting findings and rants along the way.
i have a problem..like friend..sorry ı cant speak english very well..
like this..How are you closing the loop to send the post from tumblr to wordpress?
in translate ı got it.. i had that problem..
Please ask in the WordPress or Tumblr Support Forums. Thanks.
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