It's the Myspace of blogs, I think: it's been my impression that it's really easy to create something stupidly flashy (with loud music and sparkly things) with Tumblr, which is something you generally can't do with other blog engines.

I keep confusing Tumblr with ytmnd.com, for some reason.

It's really, really quick and dirty, basically. There's nothing fundamentally good or bad about it, imho -- it's just a nudge or two simpler than setting up a blogspot blog on the grand continuum of self-expression engines that ranges from, on one end, microblogging like twitter, to full-on hand-coded site development on the other.

I've been playing with it lately for stupid quick-start projects where I don't want to put a day or two into really nailing down the configuration and styling of a custom Wordpress install for something that may not even live very long. I can get a tumblr up and tweaked in a half an hour and be good to go.

It's very very easy to make a blog complete with videos and pictures that does not look like shit. Plus there's some social stuff built into it. Which I think is what cortex also said.

I was checking it out because I have been brooding on a plan for a while to develop a sort of regional webzine. I was thinking of paying someone to customize a WordPress theme for me so that it looks really good and really magazine-like (the WP theme that's closest is Linoluna). Was wondering if Tumbler would maybe get me there easier. But none of the themes really seem to have the look I want (not that I've looked at all of them). Most seem to be one-column, basically. And I'm not too swift with code, so I don't want to design.

Maybe saving Tumblr for stupid quick-starts is the way to go.

One thing about tumblr is that it starts fast but getting extensible with it in terms of both customization on the front end and management on the back-end is not so easy, yeah. If you're doing something where you want to have more fine-grained control over presentation and content-management it's probably not the best choice compared to something like a traditional CMS install, yeah.

It's quick and dirty blogging, with some social media features built in (like followers, and reposting).

Does it have any features that would make cortex update pre-existing blogs more often?

I don't think they've figured that one out yet, no.

Tumblr really hits the sweet spot for me. It's easy to use, looks decent, good feature set. Most people use it just for sharing, but there's no reason it can't be used for anything. I'm amazed at how many old time bloggers have abandoned their wordpress blogs for tumblr.

It's the Myspace of blogs

It's not even close to the myspace of blogs In fact, in almost every way, it's the complete opposite of myspace.

Tumblr is blogging for lazy people who don't like to write shit. That's why I have one!

OK, thanks. Y'all have helped me get a bead on it.

There are a couple good porn Tumblrs.

Also, SassHat's awesome MS Paint tumblr (not porn unfortunately).

Also, SassHat's awesome MS Paint tumblr (not porn unfortunately).