I love tumblr. I love posting videos, posting images, writing posts, reblogging friend's posts, reblogging stranger's posts. It is really fun. I in fact just posted a song that has been stuck in my head for days so it can get stuck in other people's heads. I converted to tumblr from blogger this past September and I am so much happier with my blogging experience. But I understand that tumblr is not perfect and if I step back from my fanatic approval of this particular platform, I can more clearly see it's strengths and weaknesses.
One great advantage of tumblr is the dashboard element. It is similar to the facebook feed, but it's all of the posts of the people that you are following so it's curated to display only the posts of other tumblrs that you are interested in. It is very easy to follow people and have them follow you which creates an instant community in which you can be heard. The dashboard also makes it very easy to reblog interesting posts. One can also click on a heart graphic to "like" a post if you don't want to reblog or comment. Tumblr has become so popular that around the holidays, it kept notoriously crashing much to the chagrin of all tumblr fanatics, as tumblr attempted to create more space for all of its new members. If you have a tumblr, it connotates that you are "hip" and using the latest blogging platform, which sounds really funny, but I've actually heard people say this.
On the other hand, however, tumblr could also be perceived as confusing and its usability is not always inherently obvious. I could see it not appealing to an older generation. It's doesn't garner the same mass appeal that a site like Facebook does and it you are not the kind of person who has a twitter, a tumblr, and a website, it really might not be the platform that you are looking for. Tumblr also lends itself to being image-oriented because of the easy reblogging element and the dashboard feed which is similar to a twitter feed in many respects. If you are a writer or your blog posts tend to be more wordy, Wordpress or Blogger are probably more appropriate platforms. Tumblr definitely appeals to a tech-savvy crowd who are hyper aware of their online presence.
Nice critique Kristin. It's great to see a balance between both strengths and weaknesses, and I appreciate your thinking about how different types of people would react. It's great practice for us to consider a variety of different perspectives, even if we we decide to only cater to one perspective in the end. It's critical we always understand how various people will react to our designs.
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