Can I rant about something? I don’t like Tumblr blogs.
Why not?
Because there’s no way to leave comments on someone’s Tumblr blog post unless you have your own Tumblr blog. That’s so silly. This is 2010 and you’re maintaining a closed system where I can’t comment unless I’m a member of your club? I already have a blog. Why should I start another one just so I can comment on what you say? And you don’t even have trackbacks, so I can’t be part of the conversation if I blog about your post on my non-Tumblr (i.e. regular) blog.
Tumblr is different from Twitter or Facebook. It holds itself out as a blogging service. But blogging services should not be insular. Anyone can leave a comment on a WordPress blog or a Blogger blog. Not so with Tumblr.
So I just get annoyed when a link takes me to something on Tumblr.
End of rant.
Hey up until recently you couldn’t leave a comment on a Tumblr site at all. Some people think that’s a good thing and that a conversation can still happen if people just respond to each other by making blog posts and linking to the blog post they’re replying to.
But unless you have a Tumblr blog, the original writer won’t know that you’re writing a response, because there’s no trackback function that recognizes non-Tumblr blogs… right?
I guess people would need to have some kind of traffic tool on their pages, like SiteMeter or Google Analytics. Or just Google themselves regularly if they want to know who’s talking about them. Or the write of the post just needs to let them know.
It’s not as direct, but at the same time a lot of sites don’t get good comments and a lot of sites don’t display trackbacks either.
The very few Tumbler blogs I’ve seen were ones without any meaningful content. I never got to the point where I cared enough to try to comment.
The only Tumblr blogs I frequent are entirely photo-based ;)