PodCampAZ 2010 Tumblr Talk Reflections ☀
PodCampAZ v4.0 has come and gone.
For the 2010 edition, I was able to take in Saturday sessions only as family contingencies precluded any Sunday participation. Sadly, attendance, hoopla, and excitement waned, it seems, from previous year’s enactments — even the existence of cancelation rumblings on the eve of the event.
As I wrote previously, I presented a session devoted to Tumblr. And I got to give some tote bags out (which were a big hit) and stickers (not wanted so much), courtesy of the accommodating Tumblr staff.
I had the misfortune of being scheduled for the last talk before lunch. It’s an “unconference” so people shuffling in and out of sessions is to be expected, but it sure seemed like after half way thru, many matriculated out. Whether it was due to my style, the presentaion content, the flickering WiFi availability (doing live demonstrations is usually a dicey proposition with conference WiFi setups) or the lure of hunger pains, I am uncertain. But those who stuck around for the duration and those who popped in part way thru appeared to be entertained and informed with my Tumblr hands-on show-and-tell shtick. We went through the drill of creating a new Tumblr blog and I exhibited various Tumblr features and goodies. Fielding queries along the way.
Since PodCampAZ unconferences (this was my 3rd) seem to be so WordPress-centric, I was eager to share the possibilities and potential Tumblr, especially for those who never have explored Tumblr or just had given it a one-time cursory glance and moved on. Hopefully, some folk received a flavorful taste of Tumblr and impelled them to take a greater crunch.
Tumblr features that were a big hit with the audience were (a) ease of custom domain setup (someone wished to explore this in greater detail, but at the time, internet access was flaky, and time remaining was short) (b) multiple blog capability and (c) queue power and versatility.
Here are some of the questions submitted by my audience:
Q: Is it possible to have multiple blogs for a given account?
A: Yes. And I then proceeded to demonstrate live, on the big screen this capability.
Q: Via the dashboard, can I auto-email my post(s) to a list of followers|subscribers?
A: No, Tumblr social networking is centered in likes, replies and reblogs. Or funneling out to Facebook or Twitter. The gentleman asking this avowed familiarity with Posterous so I queried him if Posterous possessed this feature. He replied that it did but it was not always reliable (much like the Tumblr queue, I reckon :))
Q: Is it easy to create custom themes for Tumblr sites?
A: Very much so, if you know CSS. In fact, it’s one of the big ticket checklist items I wished to stress — in comparison to the abomination of WordPress intermingling of programming code with presentation markup, Tumblr themes are simple, sleek and blessed with a straightforward template tag setup.
Q: Is Tumblr good with search engine optimization (SEO)?
A: Eh, I’m not a SEO marketing dude and honestly (and here my teeth clamped into my tongue slightly), to me, a lot of that SEO stuff is a lot of hooey. But Tumblr spits out well formed markup, auto generates clean RSS post feeds and appears to my unrefined SEO eye to index well in the Google.
Q: Can I create a regular old-fashioned website with Tumblr like can be done with WordPress?
A: Absolutely. However, the inclusion of Tumblr overlay button links (i.e., “Customize”, “Dashboard”, “(Un)?[Ff]ollow”) might be aesthetically unpleasing to a site proprietor (but also easily remedied with a line of JavaScript, as I explained how I eliminated it in thepresentation Tumblr I created for the this talk). Also, I cautioned, remember that you are not in control of the server. If that is acceptable.
Q: Are there any content restrictions with Tumblr or what sort of content is prohibited?
A: The only verboten content I could conjure was spam and spam marketing but I was uncertain of my answer. I am aware that plenty of NSFW (which triggered a crack from the crowd about NSFWP — “Not Safe for WordPress”) stuff can creep into my dashboard.
Q: How stable is the Tumblr platform, long term?
A: Tumblr is a Top 50 site now. Don’t know exactly how many Tumblr sites there are today (there were 750 existing when I began the Tumblr trek back in 2007), but I’m guessing that it’s a heck of a lot more than when I started and still growing. With that many users, there’s enough money to keep it afloat for a while at least. In internet years. If worried, back your content up locally and/or in the cloud.
Q: Is it possible or how easy is it to create Tumblr plugins?
A: Again, remember that you don’t have control of the server. It’s not an open code base that you plant on your server or add blessed, selected code packages to a sanctioned cloud node. So your “plugin” capability is limited to JavaScript libraries or third party apps that make inventive use of the Tumblr API.
