Last week in Los Angeles I participated in a live Q&A as part of an ASCAP expo on songwriting. When the topic of Twitter came up, I explained my waning interest in it being part of my daily life. By no means do I think it's over as a medium altogether, but I do think that the days of "Twitter: The Breakthrough" have passed, as has been and will continue to be the case for every online social network. It's reached it's cruising altitude, so to speak. Patterns and templates are emerging. The Twitter-bred syntax isn't really doing it for me anymore.What is Tumblr? Should I use it?
And call me crazy, but I don't think it's the healthiest thing in the world to read scads of mentions/@replies and effectively open the floodgate of other people's approval/disapproval. Finding out in 140 characters what a stranger has to say about you is like a mathematical equation without an established value of 'x'. Who are you, stranger? What do you stand for? What do you like, and if it's not me, then what does move you? What DO you look up to? Once I find that out, I'll know how disappointed I should be.
This is where Tumblr comes in. It's the future of social networking if your image of the future features intelligent discourse. I love reading other Tumblr users replies, because they're thoughtful by virtue of the fact that if they're not, they'll bring the intellectual property value of their own blog down, and that's a commodity on Tumblr.
This post is an experiment in itself. If you want to communicate with me, open a Tumblr account, follow me, repost my blog and then add to it. I'll follow you back. Agree or disagree, lionize or demonize, but for God's sake, be original. You'll have all the room in the world to do it now.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
John Mayer's Take on Twitter
He writes:
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4 comments:
I opened a tumblr site a while back, just to secure the name, but I thought it was a blogging format like wordpress or blogger. It is, however, very lovely to look at, and the people on it seem deliberately so. I agree with Mayer on all counts save one: even if your readership is as intellectual as yourself, your measure of self-worth would still be you, and those who measure up to you...and that'll just never truly be satisfying. Sorry, Mayer. Tumblr won't do it either.
If JM says it... it must be true.
I opened a tumblr account a while ago (shepherdsnotes.tumblr.com), but mainly to archive stuff I find on the web, videos, etc. I've noticed that there is quite a social element to the eco-system though. I may start using it more.
Tumblr is like blogger, but without (easy) comments. Plus, it makes attributing and reposting anything from the web easy as cake. In your dashboard, you can see a river of whatever everybody else is linking to, quoting, or pictures or videos.
Any format, be it a blog, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Tumblr, Virbº, Delicious, Digg, Blogger, or Ning, or anything else anybody can come up with will be as intrinsically good as the users that inhabit it. Folks looking for something more awesomer somewhere else will constantly be looking for something else.
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