What is Tumblr?
Tumblr is a micro-blogging platform founded by David Karp in 2007. Tumblr is a free, open site that allows users to post any type of media (text, photos, video, links, etc.) from a variety of other sites as well as from its own users. This function of Tumblr, called rebloging, acts similarly to social media platforms' abilities to "share" posts.
Currently Tumblr houses more than 83 million blogs. Demographics for the US show the average Tumblr user to be between 18 and 24 years old with some level of college experience. Third-party measurement firm Quantcast ranks Tumblr #14 on its top ranking international websites, putting Tumblr behind social media sites Facebook and Twitter but ahead of blogging sites Wordpress and Blogger.
According to Business Insider, Tumblr "seems to have learned a lot from the mistakes of others [blogging platforms" and it "just might be the best blogging platform ever made." While I can't speak to whether Tumblr is the best platform ever, I can say with some authority that it does embody multimodality and multiliteracies as well as offers many affordances that are useful for the composition classroom. I explore this in the following drop-down tabs "Tumblr, Multimodality, and Multiliteracies" and "Affordances of Tumblr."
Currently Tumblr houses more than 83 million blogs. Demographics for the US show the average Tumblr user to be between 18 and 24 years old with some level of college experience. Third-party measurement firm Quantcast ranks Tumblr #14 on its top ranking international websites, putting Tumblr behind social media sites Facebook and Twitter but ahead of blogging sites Wordpress and Blogger.
According to Business Insider, Tumblr "seems to have learned a lot from the mistakes of others [blogging platforms" and it "just might be the best blogging platform ever made." While I can't speak to whether Tumblr is the best platform ever, I can say with some authority that it does embody multimodality and multiliteracies as well as offers many affordances that are useful for the composition classroom. I explore this in the following drop-down tabs "Tumblr, Multimodality, and Multiliteracies" and "Affordances of Tumblr."