how to tumble?

April 11, 2009 6:00 PM

How do I interact with others on tumblr?

I recently started a blog on tumblr. Since there are no "blogrings" or anything (a la xanga or those other blog sites), and no "Comments" section, how does one interact with others? How do I find new blogs to read? How do I give those people feedback? Any other useful tips?

posted by jitterbug perfume to computers & internet (4 comments total)

There are comments in Tumblr. You can sign up with disqus, and they'll give you the code to add to your theme. Google around.
posted by Jaltcoh at 7:12 PM on April 11

Other thoughts:

- Google site:tumblr.com + a topic you're interested in. This should turn up a bunch of Tumblr blogs that at least have a better-than-random chance of being interesting to you.

- 18 music blogs (great concept: "songs you used to love")

- Here's a particularly tasteful blog.

- You can try mine; I don't want to be overly self-promotional by linking here, but my Tumblr username's the same as it is here.

- You can usually find a "follow" button in someone's sidebar. Click this when you find a blog you like; then the person might reciprocally follow you. You should have icons of each blog you're following in your sidebar (unless you're using a theme that omits these).

- Some of the blogs (thought apparently not most of them) have a few other interactive features: there's a "favorite" (or is it "love"?) button, and you can also use a "reblog" button to blog other people's content. Anyone who writes a heading that ends with a question mark has the option to activate this as an open question for others to submit answers to (though unfortunately this is so inconspicuous I doubt it's used very often).

On the whole, I agree with you that Tumblr doesn't make it very easy to reach out to other Tumblrs (?). As I said, you can manually add a comments section, but most people don't do that, and there's no messaging system. It's too bad, and kind of surprising for a site whose appeal is so much based on being fun and easy to use.
posted by Jaltcoh at 8:56 PM on April 11

One more thing: at least put some of your own info in your "Information" (sidebar), whether it's your email address, AIM, Facebook, Twitter, or whatever works for you. You might still find it hard to reach out to others, but at least make it easy for them to reach out to you if they happen to find you first.
posted by Jaltcoh at 9:00 PM on April 11

In my experience, every tumblog allows following, "loving", and reblogging via buttons that are overlaid on the blog if you are logged in to Tumblr. Reblogging, following, and "loving" posts are great ways to let folks know you care.

When you reblog, be sure to keep some link to the original site. It's an etiquette thing.

I have found most of the blogs I follow by clicking through to blogs that people have reblogged from. If you find one tumblr that does things you like you can often find a whole bunch more just following the links.

Check out my url in my profile. We can be pallies.
posted by wemayfreeze at 1:55 AM on April 12