Many have been looking at solutions such as Posterous and Tumblr, which offer a middle ground between the longer topics and “care and feeding” that blogs generally involve and the minimalistic Twitter. In particular, It seems as if Tumblr is experiencing impressive growth and getting lots of positive buzz these days.
PR and social media influencer Steve Rubel gave Tumblr a boost and made waves last month when he implemented a “scorched earth policy,” turning off his blogs and moving his digital presence to Tumblr. Steve explained his reasoning in his post – here’s an excerpt::
I fundamentally believe that we are entering the next great era of the web – The Validation Era. In this age of too much content and not enough time, the public will increasingly need to hear things validated across four interconnected media clovers that are converging across four different screens – phones, tablets, PCs and TVs. To be successful, businesses and individuals will need to continually ensure their engagement spans the media cloverleaf.
That’s why I decided to jump to Tumblr and why I didn’t stay with Posterous or move to WordPress or SquareSpace, all of which are solid platforms. Tumblr is a truly unique hybrid. It sits squarely in the center of the Media Cloverleaf.
Steve’s manifesto made waves, and there were many posts, comments and tweets in its wake. I read the post and comments on Steve’s blog (and on TheNextWeb, where it was cross-posted), and also on SpinSucks, which interviewed Steve about his move. The post drew 118 comments, many of which pitted Tumblr vs. WordPress (one commenter snidely reminded us of Steve’s scorched earth move to lifestreams awhile back; another described Tumblr as ‘”the love child of blogging and Twitter”).
Although Tumble vs. WordPress might not be the most obvious comparison (looking at Posterous vs. Tumblr would be more of an apples to apples contest), it does have its merits – in a sense it pits traditional and full-featured vs. new and streamlined, and the debate gave both sides the opportunity to make their arguments about why to go for one type of solution vs. another.
I thought I would feature highlights of the debate in my tale of the tape below:
