How do you tumblr?

[purplecat]

I ask, not because I don't know how to log in to the place, post, read my dashboard and use tags but because I simply can't figure out what, for want of a better description, I'll call a sensible workflow.

So how do you use tumblr? if you do.

Do you log on and just refresh your dashboard regularly? Do you just read particular tags once a day? several times a day? What sort of things do you post? How do you decide whether to post to tumblr or to DreamWidth/LiveJournal or to twitter or to Facebook. I'm just interested, really, in how other people actually use the place in order to figure out whether I want to use it and, if so, how.

TBH, I find twitter a bit mysterious too beyond its uses for a kind of circular self-promotion in public understanding circles, but I feel I have more of a handle on it than tumblr.

Comments

[senmut]

Twitter is like my instant messenger to the world. And a place to grab and promote news pieces or follow celebrities who actually enertain me. I throw things to it that are inane, or observations, or me venting mostly.Stuff that is quick, immediate, and needs little context.

Tumblr? +sighs+ I have acquired a bunch that I follow. I stay logged in, and check it if I have nothing else to do. I do not have endless scrolling enabled on the web (sadly it is on my tablet). So I can limit myself to 5 pages on a weekday, or 10 on a weekend. Per check. During the week, I might check it twice a day. The weekend, due to various issues, I might check it once an hour.

I do reblog things I find entertaining or thought provoking, but I endeavor to use the queue function. Immediate, happening now events may get blogged right then, but often I queue these as well to help keep them in the public consciousness a day or two later. I also use it to advertise my fic, and if the strangers leaving kudos are anything to go by, it does work a bit to bring in people.

[purplecat]

I have several tumblr's on RSS feeds, but I have more on my dashboard which, as a result, just appears to be full of twitching images every time I look at it - maybe I don't get along with gifs. I'm also not much into retweet/reblog/Facebook share so perhaps that's the problem I have with it.

[senmut]

Get the xkit extension if it is compatible with your browser. It has a kill function for .gifs.

And that makes sense, not using the share function translating to not interfacing with tumblr well. It's really a huge echo chamber for a few talented artists/manip makers so far as fandom is concerned, by my impression.

[purplecat]

*g* I have xkit, but couldn't figure out what to do with that either. I'll fiddle around with killing .gifs it might make the experience a bit like sensory overload.

[isis]

I have the same issues as you, I think. I also have xkit installed but it doesn't really help me. It's just too much noise and not enough signal for my taste, and in my primarily tumblr fandoms, the signal isn't much to my taste either, alas.

[purplecat]

I'm beginning to think it needs a multi-pronged approach - feed readers for individual blogs with a high signal to noise ratio, tags (tracked or otherwise) for idle subject-specific browsing and finding new blogs and the dashboard for moments of boredom. This makes the dashboard a lot less central to the experience than I'm used to on other platforms.

I've still no idea about posting, really, beyond a feeling that if I start using it seriously I'm going to need something like Hootsuite to manage social media. At the moment I have a mix of social media things which cover my regular work, my public understanding work, personal stuff, general fannish stuff, and fan fiction and fan art in slightly overlapping ways. I have a horrible feeling I need to make some space to actually figure out what sort of content I want to send where and then try to use it all consistently.

[arcanetrivia]

I read all the individual accounts I follow by RSS, because I prefer reading oldest-to-newest rather than scrolling down the dashboard backwards for many pages. I also like being able to separate them into folders based on importance to me.

That isn't an option for the tags I track, so there I just have to live with the reverse chronology.

I reblog various posts I like from tracked tags or other people. I also sometimes share "new" content (by which I mean, content that will show up in tag tacking pages; only "top posts" do that, reblogs do not) from Flickr or DeviantArt or such places if and only if 1. the person posting has those share options turned on on the remote site, and 2. doesn't point me to their own tumblr post to reblog.

I also reblog certain more conversational, serious posts with the intent of talking to 1. the person I reblogged from, who at least gets a notification and 2. anyone else who might see it, but tumblr is not good for threaded conversation in the manner of LJ/DW, a web board, or an email list(/Usenet model).

I don't use it at all in the same way I do DW/LJ. I might post very brief, silly text posts but I don't use it for posting much personal stuff, or self-created fandom content either.

[purplecat]

It does begin to look to me that tumblr blogs I actually want to follow should be in my RSS reader, while tumblr follows should be used for stuff its fun to look at occasionally but where I don't mind missing something.

As for what to post - really don't know.

[arcanetrivia]

You should follow people on tumblr even if you only actually read them by RSS. For one thing it lets them know you are reading them (they get a notification you followed, they may want to follow back). There are also some privileges like who you can send asks (private messages) or replies (a certain kind of direct message to a post) that are based on whether/how long you have been following someone.

[momijizukamori]

Tumblr is kind of a strange, lumbering beast. Most of the people I follow are either friends from other places, cosplayers/cosplay-related blogs, or authors/artists who's work I like. I tend to check frequently, although I've been trying not to have it always open because it's easy to let it become a distraction. Most of the original content I post is cosplay-related - I mirror stuff with photos onto DW via Zapier because I don't have much overlap between the two. With reblogs and my queue I do maybe two or three posts a day, which is a lot less than some of my friends, but relatively average for my dash as a whole.

I also have a pile of single-topic, frequently-updating tumblrs I read via RSS - some fandom, some fashion or art. Basically that way I can go 'I feel like looking at a bunch of historical Chinese fashion right now' and flip through a bunch of posts, rather than have stuff showing up on my dash every hour.

[purplecat]

I am beginning to get the impression that rather than treating the dash like the DW Reading page, I should be using RSS readers for that aspect and using the dash more like a twitter/facebook style idle browse feature.

[momijizukamori]

Probably! I mean, I read all my dash (minus stuff hidden from me because I blacklisted a tag on it), but it can be hard to be certain you've seen everything. It's definitely a bit twitter-like that way - or FB-like but without Facebook's reordering of posts by some metric I have yet to figure out (which drives me up a wall, I want the post order to STAY PUT)

[fredbassett]

I resisted Tumblr for a very long time, as I really didn't see the point of it, but succumbed eventually so I could drool in an unbecoming manner over photos from The Musketeers.

It's good for looking at pictures, but largely useless for any kind of meaningful interaction with other friends/fans as activity seems to revolve around 'liking' a post, much like you can on Facebook, or 're-blogging' it, which acts like a Facebook share. But it's a crap format for actual conversations.

I've used it for posting interviews I've done with Musketeers folks as it gives me a place to link to when I'm emailing 'officaldom' eg actors' agents, as it saves me laying a cookie trail back to specific LJ comms, were if they went looking around, the next entry might contain some very explicit thoughts about which part of said actor's anatomy we might wish to lick, given half a chance. *g*

I've ended up following various folks I know and , with help, learned how to track certain tags. So now I refresh my dashboard occasionally to see what comes up, and also occasionally check the tracked tags.

I rarely 're-blog' stuff as I don't quite get the point of that, and when other people do it a lot, it does mean you see the same thing multiple times but I do 'like' stuff, as that shows some degree of solidarity.

For the interview stuff, I've posted completely separately to both Tumblr and LJ, with links on Twitter to Tumblr rather than LJ for the reasons above. For fan and the occasional personal stuff, I much prefer LJ. I only use DW for a journal backup as there's no meaningful amount of stuff there for Primeval, and the musketeers anonymous kink meme there seems to have died under the cumbersome weight of every increasing trigger warnings coupled with modly neglect. AO£ I use for posting some fic and reading some stuff.

But LJ is still very much my spiritual home and where I have the most meaningful interaction with like-minded individuals.

[purplecat]

I do quite like the little tumblr feed that LJ now has in the right hand menu - particularly the stuff reggietate posts/reblogs but somehow, when I go to actual tumblr I just get totally overwhelmed by all the gifs.

It does sound like maybe I should make more of an effort with tracked tags though...

[deinonychus-1.livejournal.com]

Tracked tags...? I've heard of this, but have no clue at all what it is or how it works.

This is probably because I have been on tumblr for a grand total of a week, and am still trying to figure most things out.

[purplecat]

If you click on a tag there's a "track this tag" option.

I've just had a play with it and, combined with an "extension" in the xkit thing I can get a list of my tracked tags in my tumblr sidebar with the number of new posts for that tag next to them.

NB. Possibly this happens anyway without any need to mess with skit *iz confused*.

I've also tried an xkit extension which I think is supposed to hide reblogs but it ain't doing anything that I can see. EDIT: aha! I've managed to figure out how to switch it on, now there are only TWO POSTS on my dash!!!

[fredbassett]

What's the Tumblr thing in the LJ menu? I don't seem to have picked up on that.

Tracked tags are the most usefil thing, but having said that, I seem to have forgotten how to track new tags! Ooops.

[purplecat]

On my feed/Friends page there is a whole load of "log in to Facebook", "Log into Twitter", "Log into tumblr" type things. I'm not sure how or when they got there, LJ has messed with the Friends Page so much recently, but at some point I switched several of them on and so now I see the most recent five Facebook feed, twitter feed, and tumblr dash things on the side of my LJ friends page.

[fredbassett]

Hmm, I haven't got any of that showing. Are you on the new version of the friend's feed? I've stayed away from that as I like seeing my header and the comm header.

[purplecat]

Yeah, I'm on the new version, possibly its only available in that style.

[fredbassett]

Thanks. I'll probably stay clear of it then and just view Tumblr seperately, but I must find Reggie on there. I;d forgotten she uses it a lot for her Doctor Who stuff.

[deinonychus-1.livejournal.com]

I rarely 're-blog' stuff as I don't quite get the point of that, and when other people do it a lot, it does mean you see the same thing multiple times

This is precisely the problem I have discovered since I started with tumblr last week. The Atlantis fandom people over there all tend to know and follow each other, and there is a lot of reblogging of posts. Especially right now with new episodes currently airing, I'm finding that every time I log onto my dashboard it looks like I've got tonnes of new stuff, but actually it's about four or five different posts, which have each been reblogged anywhere between two and seven times each, so it's actually not that much 'new' stuff at all, it's the same stuff multiple times.

I have no idea how to avoid this.

That said, I do actually find that reblogging is a way of having at least an approximation of a conversation, if someone posts a discussion or thoughts post rather than just pictures/gifs, you can reblog and then add your own thoughts and discussion. Although I still think lj commenting is a much easier way of having a proper conversation.

[purplecat]

A while back I installed something called xkit on tumblr because I was told it was the only way to make the place manageable, but xkit appeared to be infinitely configurable so I had no idea how I was supposed to set it up to gain this fabled manageability. One of the commenters on this post over on DreamWidth has said I can definitely use it to filter out all gifs, which might help a bit with my sense of total overload every time I look at my dash. It might also let you filter out reblogs - if its really neat it should let you filter out just reblogs from accounts you follow, though I've no idea if it is that clever.

[fredbassett]

Yep, welcome to Tumblr! That's what drives me mad, too, and you can't even avoid it by just using the tracked tags as your newsfeed as the same stuff will still show up multiple times.

The problem I find with the reblogging and adding text is that it just keeps proliferating the same post, with a bit more text added, and that drives me demented, too!

LJ commenting really can't be bettered for conversations IMHO.

[deinonychus-1.livejournal.com]

As for the original question, I'm probably not the best person to ask - see above comment, re 'only been on it a week', but my method at the moment is to log onto the dashboard and then just keep it open in a tab and refresh every now and then.

Unfortunately, with the amount of Atlantis traffic I'm getting at the moment, that initial stage of 'log on and check what's new' is a bigger task than you'd think. And with so much reblogging of the same post multiple times, I actually find it difficult to work out when I've reached the point where I last looked at it. Admittedly this might be more easily solved if I just changed to a dashboard style that showed the date when something was posted. I just haven't dared to fiddle with the style of it yet.

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

I thought tumblr was where photos went to die

The place always just seems to be some sort of pinboard for images whenever I follow any link to it.

[purplecat]

Well, um yes? However people keep saying that fandom has moved/is moving there and one hates to be the old fogey in the corner waving a stick and complaining about how things were better in my day. I just wish I could figure out how one interacts with fandom over there.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I really only use Tumblr to stick fanart in a place I can find it again. Which is why I do almost nothing with my Tumblr but reblog the most astonishing fan art. I spent years just checking a couple of accounts and I could go back to that. (And I work on the principle that anything good will be reblogged so many times that I'm bound to see it even if I can't be bothered to check my dash for more than five minutes.)

[purplecat]

It must be said I'm beginning to think that a several pronged approach is required. An RSS reader for tumblrs I actually want to follow consistently and the dash just used for idle browsing in spare moments.

[fififolle]

I follow a very select number of tumblr accounts, and rarely more than one from each fandom/interest, as that way, if I fancy going to tumblr (aka I'm bored) I refresh, flick through a nice selection of different 'interests', maybe like the odd thing just for the sake of it, then close it down :D I really don't seem to be able to make any connection there. They are either people I connect with properly elsewhere, or people I don't have any interest in connecting with, as such, and even if I did I'm not sure how I could :p Tags to me have so far been fairly useless. Half the time the things that come up aren't what I'm looking for!
Having said that, I quite like having tumblr. Hm.

[purplecat]

I think, tentatively, that "modern fandom" is much more multi-platform - you read something on tumblr and then discuss it one twitter. That thought makes my brain hurt a bit, but presumably I will get used to it eventually.

[celeste9]

Wow, I totally disagree with most of what everyone else has been saying. I actually love the reblog aspect because that way I can follow people who post stuff I'm interested in and then go to my dash and scroll down to see all the pretty. I do use the search function and tags when I'm looking for things in particular but it's impossible to find everything, particularly with high traffic tags, so I like when folks on my dash reblog as it points me to stuff I wouldn't see otherwise. Obviously if you follow a lot of people (or a lot of people who follow each other) you get some things more than once, and you get things from fandoms you aren't interested in, but it's exactly like scrolling down your f-list on LJ or a page of fic on AO3- you scroll past what you don't want. My mind is kind of boggled by how annoyed everyone else seems to be about it.

Plus, reblogging is what gets people to take an interest in what you've done- when I was putting up picspams I'd made the ones that people reblogged got way more traffic and thus more attention.

[purplecat]

Maybe part of my problem is that, on DW/LJ most people post at most once per day while on tumblr people seem to post much more frequently, so even from a handful of blogs there is a large volume.

I think the lack of cuts also doesn't help combined with the graphics preference on tumblr. An image heavy post I'm not interested in on LJ takes up hardly any space in my feed and barfly registers. Tumblr feels like it contains a lot more noise as a result.