"Too many people know too much about each other."
-Marshall McLuhan
Social media sites like Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, and Blogspot are all ways society uses to connect to a bigger community that’s out of their reach. One particular social site I want to talk about is Tumblr. Tumblr is also another blog site, but is seen for a newer generation. This newer generation using Tumblr could be ranged from thirteen year olds to early twenties. It allows this group of people to blog anything they want from written text as if it was a diary to videos to music and to pictures. With the type of blogs I’ve seen on Tumblr, which are called posts, it could reflect to the personality of a person or how the person is feeling at that moment. Tumblr is a unique compared to other blog sites because when people decide to follow you, you have the option to follow them back if you really want to see what type of posts they will make. Meaning they can see what type of posts you make, yet you won’t be able to wee what type of posts they make unless you follow them back. Also, the people you decide to follow is all up to what you see is amusing or which tumbr heads have the same personality as you.
A down side to this all is when someone you don’t like follows you, you can’t take them out of your follower list. Another down side I see is that if you follow hundreds or thousands of people, you will tend to see the same post over and over again which will seem redundant. Also, if you do follow many people, it’s kind of hard to see posts from people you would really want to see posts from like friends or certain tumblr heads.
In a way, I see Tumblr as another great way to keep people connected outside of the walls they live in. in addition, it is a better way to make yourself known without having to seem really annoying.
Well, I never had a Tumblr but a lot of my friends do. All of these new social networks seem all the same to me. You have a profile, your friends have a profile, and you read and share content just like Facebook and MySpace. It’s funny how the hype of social network sites keep jumping around as new ones are developed even though they all practically share the same purpose. I guess it’s just a matter of preference. That also really sucks how you can’t delete the annoying people that follow you from your follower list. Do you see McLuhan’s quote as being a good thing or bad thing?
ReplyDeleteAs a fellow Tumblrite, you reminded me that I need to sort through the people I'm following and unfollow a few blogs because I know exactly how repetitive posts can get on the dashboard, especially when you follow a lot of the same people the people you're following follow.
ReplyDeleteThe thing I hate most is when people ask me to follow them, and they'll follow me in return. I don't get why that matters. To me, Tumblr is just a place for me to express my thoughts despite whether or not someone is reading them. Do you agree? Or do you have a different goal for your blog?
From what you said, something I don't understand is how a person you dislike that follows you would bother you. You can still post whatever you like, right? Who cares about that person? -- It's your blog!
I use Tumblr also. I agree that tumblr is a way to let people blog or reblog things that interest them in that moment. Tumblr is a fun way to express yourself without focusing on text like a lot of other blogs do. Also I agree that it does get annoying when you see the same thing reblogged a bunch of times on the dashboard. One thing about Tumblr that keeps me on it for a long time is infinite scrolling. My infinite scrolling is on so I just keep going page after page without realizing that i'm actually going through so many pages. Maybe on your vlog you can suggest to turn infinite scrolling off, so people can keep track of how many pages they've gone through easier.
ReplyDelete