Tag: tumblr

Who needs microblogging?

I disagree with this.

Twitter or Bluesky? How about neither. – by Nate Silver:

The conventional wisdom is that if Twitter declines, some other ā€œmicrobloggingā€ platform will come along to gobble up its user base. But Twitter was never particularly successful as a business model.

I think thereā€™s a very real need for a status / microblogging platform and have since the early wonderful days of twttr in 2006 (40404). Tumblr was also in play at the same time and served a very different function than something like a WordPress blog here.

Twitter started its decline in my mind back when it disabled Track and then in 2010 or so when it killed the API that made it so glorious. So whether itā€™s via federation or something else, there needs to be a ā€œreal timeā€ status protocol (which I thought Twitter would become similar to IMAP).

Tumblr’s Untraditional and Provocative Mobile Advertising Approach

It’s interesting to note that Tumblr is taking a different approach to monetizing its rabid and highly-participatory audienceā€¦ rather than selling IAB-style display ads or keyword based text ads, Tumblr is encouraging brands to put their own content out there as ads and use more organic means such as the built in views or hearts paradigms as measures of engagement.

Tumblr to Introduce Mobile Advertising to Help Achieve Profit – Bloomberg: “Tumblr, a startup founded by Karp, now gets more than 16 billion monthly page views worldwide, according to Quantcast Corp. To reach those eyeballs, companies wonā€™t be able to buy display space or keywords in the ways they are accustomed — Tumblr is ā€˜not going to get into the regular ad network,ā€™ Gottfrid said.

Instead, they have to pay to get their own Tumblr blogs seen by more people. They can measure impact by how many viewers republished the post on their own blogs or ā€˜heartedā€™ it.”

Twitter’s card-based display advertising and promoted tweets platform has been an up-and-down adventure for many advertisers and marketers because Twitter is asking companies to place a style of advertising on top of community that doesn’t operate in such a fashion.

Tumblr’s approach is definitely refreshing in that they are welcoming advertisers and marketers but asking them to not just bring traditional Madison Ave constructs to the service but to actually participate using methods that the users use and are familiar with themselves.

I can’t wait to see how the numbers go for this.

Here We Go Again (Moving to Tumblr)

After Posterous’ non-cool move with affiliate links, I’ve decided to move my blog over here to Tumblr.

I’ve had this blog on WordPress.com then a self-hosted WordPress plan for a long while then over to Posterous, a few static page iterations and now here on Tumblr.

I’m tired of moving it, so let’s hope this one sticks. Based on Tumblr’s past moves, they seem to be in this business for more than just quick bucks or exponential (spammy) growth.

I like that.

So, we’ll see.

Now I just need to figure out how to get all that content off of Posterous and over here. Looks like it might take some APIĀ spelunking.

1,000th Post

“Now, with the blogs, you can share your thoughts with up to 10 people.”

This is my 1,000th (published…a few dozen never saw the light of day, thankfully) post on CostPerNews.

CPN went live on Nov 1, 2006 and I had no idea where it was going (and still don’t). 19 months later (at an average of 52 posts a month), we’ve hit the magic 1k mark.

I knew in October of ’06 that I wanted to have a place where I could write as frequently or infrequently as I wanted and cover the emerging web2.0 space and the connections I was (and still am) seeing with traditional affiliate marketing. I came up with the name while mowing the lawn that Fall and ran inside to register the domain before I forgot. Luckily, I didn’t forget.

I can honestly say that this little blog has been the most important vehicle for my own personal brand and business, helping me to get into doors that wouldn’t have been opened otherwise and helping me to get to know some pretty incredible people along the way. If you’re wondering if you should start a blog, take it from me… yes.

So, thank you for being there and listening to my crazy ramblings about Twitter and Tumblr and RSS and open source over the past couple of years. I’ve sold this blog, quit this blog (twice), re-acquired this blog and redesigned it (at least 10 times). And here we are again.

I’ve grown a lot with this place and I look forward to growing even more with the next thousand posts.

Many thanks all!!

Sam