“A third of Tumblr's active users come from households with incomes above $100,000 per year, giving it higher income skew than Facebook or Twitter, according to Comscore, the Web analytics firm.”
—Yahoo Tumblr Acquisition: It’s About Young People With Money
“I’ll give you the most logical conclusion kids are ditching Facebook—one that none of the articles I read on the Great Teenage Facebook Exodus mentioned. And the evidence that supports the theory is right there in the Piper Jaffray survey. But first let’s define Facebook. What is Facebook to most people over the age of 25? It’s a never-ending class reunion mixed with an eternal late-night dorm room gossip session mixed with a nightly check-in on what coworkers are doing after leaving the office. In other words, it’s a place where you go to keep tabs on your friends and acquaintances. You know what kids call that? School.”
—Cliff Watson
An ode to tumblr, my true love
Two years ago, I had no idea what tumblr was. My first introduction to this site happened because I was in charge of the online publicity for our BFA Senior Thesis show - it’s still online. Even then, I hardly understood what it was; we didn’t follow anyone and basically used the blog as a hosting site for our artwork.
I graduated, and over the summer my mind was occupied with the idea of blogging. I did some research about tumblr to find out what it was all about (I still don’t get it), and came to the conclusion that if I was interested in blogging at all, having a community like that behind tumblr was going to be my best bet at getting my message into the world. When I decided to launch my own tumblr (formerly UMZoology, now TheBrainScoop), it was immediately well-received, and I had a few hundred followers within the first month.
My tumblr grew, was featured in the Museum tag, gained popularity. My tumblr helped me get into graduate school, as it demonstrated a knowledge of social media and community-building. My tumblr and its audience got Hank’s attention when he first visited our museum, and my tumblr remains what I believe to be my fundamental foothold in the Internet community. I’ve grown intensely fond of it. I firmly believe that I owe everything that has come of my life through museum work to tumblr. That sounds an awful lot like a kind of cult mentality, but if two years ago I hadn’t decided to start blogging about my museum work, none of this would have come to fruition as it did.
If Yahoo buys tumblr and everything changes for the worse, I will definitely be disappointed. I’m aware all good things come to an end, but this site has given me so many opportunities beyond my wildest dreams that I can’t even imagine robbing other people of those possibilities - that is, if they choose to pursue a tumblr outside of the Supernatural/Dr. Who/Sherlock fandoms, at least. Regardless, something else will inevitably crop up and take its place. If that’s the case, I’m just happy I was given a chance to create my own little niche in our happy online community.
<3 You, tumblr.
“Dont talk about your riches infront of the poor, dont talk about your good health infront of the sick, dont talk about your power infront of the weak, dont talk about the joys of your life infront of the sad ones, dont talk about your freedom infront of the captivated, dont talk about your children infront of those who cant have any, and dont talk about your parents infront of the orphans, for their wounds cannot withstand more” ”
— Ali ibn Abi Talib (a.s.)“We promise not to screw it up.”
—Marissa Mayer, Yahoo CEO, announcing the company’s agreement to acquire Tumblr. On Tumblr, of course. Tumblr. + Yahoo! = !!
FJP: We’re wary, but let’s hope so.
“There are no stats programs here. There is no like button.”
Michele Catalano writes about moving back to her blog hosted at her original domain, not because Yahoo bought Tumblr, but because she wants to get away from the likes/reblogs as validation trap:
For as long as I have wanted to be a writer – and that’s about 40 long years – there was never any part of that dream that included obsessively checking a page of statistics and judging my self worth by the numbers within. I always wrote for the sheer pleasure of it, from putting that first word down to finishing the final edit, writing has always been a labor of love. Recently, it had become just a labor.
So here I am back at my old domain, the one where I started writing publicly (ok, blogging) in 2001, the one where I started telling my stories to the world. I’m taking the majority of my writing away from tumblr, away from the hearts and reblogs, away from the instant validation. I don’t want to labor anymore. I want to love what I write. I want to love why I write.
There are no stats programs here. There is no like button. I will have no idea how many people will read each post. But I will write and I will learn to love to write again.
I was chatting with Michele on Twitter, and she said, “For the first couple of years I blogged I had no idea how many readers I had. And I was better off for it.” It reminded me of Greil Marcus, talking about the early days of Rolling Stone, when they said, “My God, people are actually paying attention to this. Let’s pretend they aren’t.”
