Tumblelogging: don’t think about it, just write
A new trend in blogging is taking the internet by storm, and it doesn’t even want to stand the test of time, says Giles Turnbull
Weblogs? Been there, done that. Facebook? It’s full of kids. Twitter? That’s so 2006, darling. No, the smart thing to be doing online these days is tumblelogging, which is to weblogs what text messages are to email - short, to the point, and direct.
Tumblelogs are so named because they’re much more akin to a stream of consciousness. They represent the thoughts of the tumblelogger more or less as they happen, tumbling out of their brain, into a computer, then on to the web. Having a traditional weblog means having all the extras that go with it. A snazzy design, a searchable archive, links and widgets and comments and trackbacks and all that fluffy stuff that makes the front page of most weblogs look so busy.
Tumblelogs are the punk rock of blogging. They strip away all that prog-rock space jazz and focus on the content: short thoughts, quotes, photos, music, video clips and links. Unlike the verbose ramblings of most weblogs, where anything posted tends to be accompanied by several paragraphs of quotes, opinion and additional links, a tumblelogger just posts one thing at a time. An interesting photo or a single link. There might be one line of comment, but rarely more than that.
Tumbleloggers like variety. Their posts are all mixed up and added one after the other, in the order that they fall out of the tumblelogger’s head. There’s no need for order, categories or taxonomies. What’s done is done - each item is posted and then pushed down the list by the posts that follow. Tumblelogging embraces the ephemeral existence of web content. A post is important today and all but forgotten tomorrow….
