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Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

blog.picplum.com

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Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#2
A mistake people seem to make is assuming Tumblr is a blogging platform akin to Wordpress.com, it isn't, it's a different beast entirely. The majority of Tumblr is the "community" of ~teenagers sharing pictures and videos and posts, Tumblr revolves around the dashboard not individual blogs. Sure you can host your company blog there, but do tumblr care about the uptime of that vs. the uptime of their dashboard?

Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#3

A mistake people seem to make is assuming Tumblr is a blogging platform akin to Wordpress.com, it isn't, it's a different beast entirely. The majority of Tumblr is the "community" of ~teenagers sharing pictures and videos and posts, Tumblr revolves around the dashboard not individual blogs. Sure you can host your company blog there, but do tumblr care about the uptime of that vs. the uptime of their dashboard?

Agreed and I use tumblr a lot for my personal reblog http://stammy.com but I wouldn't host any important startup blog stuff there.

Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#4
Akshay noticed I was so annoyed with Tumblr that he suggested I write this post detailing our move and urging other startups to do the same.

As much as this is a very staunch gesture, I think it's a very valid one. Tumblr has a huge, active, and connected community. It can be a great entry point for niche startups to find users and build an audience, but the performance and stability just does not cut the mustard.

I greatly want tumblr to succeed, their platform is very fresh, the theme garden model they have fits their mold perfectly (although the premium marketplace seems to be extremely esoteric) but I also hope this suggestion for startups to choose an alternative platform kicks tumblr in some sort of direction to improve the QoS.

Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#5
post #4

Akshay noticed I was so annoyed with Tumblr that he suggested I write this post detailing our move and urging other startups to do the same. As much as this is a very staunch gesture, I think it's a very valid one. Tumblr has a huge, active, and connected community. It can be a great entry point for niche startups to find users and build an audience, but the performance and stability just does not cut the mustard. I…

It is still possible to create a Tumblr blog that pulls the RSS from your site, though. You can just tell it to only display the URL and title so you don't get an SEO mess.

Not perfect, of course, but it still gives you a slight chance to use Tumblr's amazing sharing platform.

Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#6
post #5
post #4

Akshay noticed I was so annoyed with Tumblr that he suggested I write this post detailing our move and urging other startups to do the same. As much as this is a very staunch gesture, I think it's a very valid one. Tumblr has a huge, active, and connected community. It can be a great entry point for niche startups to find users and build an audience, but the performance and stability just does not cut the mustard. I…

It is still possible to create a Tumblr blog that pulls the RSS from your site, though. You can just tell it to only display the URL and title so you don't get an SEO mess. Not perfect, of course, but it still gives you a slight chance to use Tumblr's amazing sharing platform.

You are correct. That's actually one of my favorite features tumblr has, it reminds me much of a site I used back in the 2000's called SideBlog. It worked exactly the same way, drop in a line of javascript and it pulled in your posts and you could design everything around it.

This kind of reinforces my earlier commentary, tumblr has some great features and awesome integration, but their performance and reliability always make me steer clear when needing to put up a blog for a client.

Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#7
We (NodeSocket) are on Posterous; and so far so good. Love the fact that if a post makes the HN front page, we don't have to worry about scaling or downtime. Also, it was super easy to select a theme and modify some basic CSS rules to match our branding and website. Finally, they have some nice nerdy features as well; GitHub Gists and Vimeos automatically converted from a URL to embed.

Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#9
Since when is a startup's corporate blog mission-critical?

PicPlum's recent blog posts seem to be pretty run-of-the mill ... press mentions, tips, new features, etc. Nothing that (a) would hurt the company if the blog was down or (b) you couldn't simply use your company Facebook page for.

Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#10
post #9

Since when is a startup's corporate blog mission-critical? PicPlum's recent blog posts seem to be pretty run-of-the mill ... press mentions, tips, new features, etc. Nothing that (a) would hurt the company if the blog was down or (b) you couldn't simply use your company Facebook page for.

Agreed, we didn't have anything too interesting in recent past but we're going to start ramping that up. Especially after checking out rand fishkin's presentation about inbound marketing.
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