Okay, so when I haven’t been developing the niche user generated content site, I’ve been thinking almost obsessively about life streaming and micro-blogging. Really, ReadWriteWeb’s interview with David Karp on version 3 of Tumblr is what brought me back around to think about it more.
While I agree Twitter and Tumblr are different services entirely, I find the dismissal of Twitter as competition a bit silly. Twitter is very much a micro-blogging tool. There are “life stream” tweets that go through it, but the path that Twitter has been taking developmentally is micro-blogging (and that’s been a large part of the adoption for it, I think). As such, I’d be willing to bet there are those using Twitter instead of Tumblr, I’d also be there’s some cannibalization going on (not the people eating kind). None the less, Twitter is more of a communication tool where Tumblr is more of a sharing mechanism. So I can see why they wouldn’t be immediately concerned about Twitter as a competitor. That and because Jaiku, not twitter, was recently acquired by Google.
Personally, I think Twitter ought to be about life streaming and Tumblr about micro-blogging, as that would make the most sense. At first I was going to make a sarcastic remark about how a micro-blogging platform doesn’t allow comments. But then I read David’s blog and saw they’re cooking something neat up. Best to let that comment slide so I can avoid inserting proverbial foot into mouth (this time).
Going back to the R/WW’s post. It’s all pretty good except for the mention of FriendFeed as a competitor to Tumblr. Not to be rude, but now I just feel like we’ve thrown in three different concepts entirely. Twitter’s micro-blogging communication / “life streaming” (Read: Facebook Status is life streaming), Tumblr’s micro-blogging (without comments), and FriendFeed’s “life streaming” as the glorified mini-feed.
FriendFeed is what I thought of as the end result of the evolution of life streaming. The glorified Facebook mini-feed, telling everyone when I update stuff and letting me change my status and leave comments on my updates. I’m not really sure if it just looked a lot cooler in my head, or if FriendFeed just looks kind of, uh, not cool, but I don’t feel very inclined to use FriendFeed.
Version 3 of Tumblr looks pretty neat though, and I may give it a try. All in all, Tumblr, in my opinion, is the right evolutionary step in the world of blogging. Here’s a crazy afterthought: Place the equivalent of Facebook Status at the header of the Tumblr pages.