Tumblr vs. LJ?

[charmian]

Prompted by fears that people are abandoning LJ for Tumblr, some LJ users have started a movement for people to take a month-long break from Tumblr.

http://oxymoronassoc.livejournal.com/576168.html
http://captaincatapult.livejournal.com/202549.html
http://glassbomb.livejournal.com/533599.html

While I have no interest in participating in such a campaign, I hadn't realized that so many people were apparently moving from LJ to Tumblr (Tumblr's growth is continuing, though, and those new users must be coming from somewhere). Personally, I see no reason why the two can't coexist, and I suspect that Tumblr's popularity is because of its ease of use, lower pressure, and also because the personal, locked component on LJ is migrating to FB and locked Twitters (Tumblr doesn't, IIRC, have much emphasis on the locked aspects of its service).

Some highlights:


http://glassbomb.livejournal.com/533599.html?thread=10800479#t10800479 : on how Tumblr is "for pictures." Tumblr's interface for uploading pictures is much easier than LJ's, I must say.

http://captaincatapult.livejournal.com/202549.html?thread=6170421#t6170421 : Some find LJ too full of bashing of their favorite shows/characters.

http://oxymoronassoc.livejournal.com/576168.html?thread=5528232#t5528232 : Apparently, people are also starting to post fanfic on Tumblr, thus meaning that it's not only about pics there.


Anyone else have other links? Have you noticed any LJ-->Tumblr migration? I noticed that some of the people on these posts, also, are claiming they've seen a big slow-down of LJ activity compared to last year.

In any event, I think one thing which also defines Tumblr is that, unlike LJ, it's developing consciously within a niche, and they are very willing to experiment with new features, and axe them if they don't make the cut.

In other news, now you can use Twitter as an identity on LJ, meaning you can comment using your Twitter account. Reportedly, according to Russian sources, in this update you'll also be able to crosspost a Tweet digest to LJ on a daily basis automatically, and be able to view all posts by a specific user within a community.

Comments

[sub_divided]

all posts by a specific user within a community gets major points from me!

[charmian]

Yeah, it does sound useful. If it's in the open-source part of the code, DW should pick it up, IMHO.

....Of course, nowadays I hardly read any LJ comms, so it's not v. useful for me, unfortunately.

[ursamajor]

people are also starting to post fanfic on Tumblr, thus meaning that it's not only about pics there.

I have a Tumblr, and when people do long-format writing on it, it's very confusing to me, particularly when it's reblogged. I detest that LJ imported this feature, because I feel like in both cases, it's not always obvious who originally wrote the thing. Publishing fanfic with these sorts of "features" just seems like a Really Bad Idea to me - and how do you even get feedback? I would think it feels more like shouting into the void than anything else.

I find Tumblr really great for sharing stuff in the format of a post that will fit on a single screen. While the attribution thing is still a bit problematic, I think it's also a really good interface for sharing other peoples' work that's in that single-screen format. The updating and reading tools come across as meant for squee and beauty and simple stuff; once you're over a paragraph or a screen, I feel much more encouraged to skim, and I'm not sure why.

[charmian]

Hmm, I think on Tumblr it's usually fairly obvious, especially on the dashboard, who originated the content. Not really sure about the LJ equivalent, but at least in that one, allowing your post to be reblogged is something you have to opt into, so there it's not like people can have their posts reblogged without consent.

I'm not sure how they get feedback... Maybe they don't really care about feedback, or they do it via reblogs? I've seen quite a bit of discussion via reblog, but I've also seen long-form posts as well, especially among music journalist bloggers.

[foxfirefey]

Maybe the people who post fic to Tumblr don't really want feedback? Maybe it's just nice to see how many times it could get reblogged without risking actual criticism? (Total speculation. Ways of the fic, I know them not.)

[charmian]

There's also 'likes' on Tumblr, also. I wonder if people actually reblog fanfiction. I have no idea, really.

[troisroyaumes]

I write long-form posts on Tumblr pretty regularly. (I don't expect them to be reblogged though.) But I have Disqus installed and there's also a Reply function on the Dashboard which people could use to leave comments.

[foxfirefey]

I wonder if the migration is more of a fandom thing? I know that ONTD users have shared Tumblrs in comments, but that's kind of different.

Facebook is the thing that slurps away on the non-fandom side. WordPress, self hosted or on WordPress.com, if they're public bloggers looking to move to something more geared for that. Twitter for public blurbing. But I can't really say I've seen much Tumblr pointing to drifting across my LJ flist. But maybe they just make them and don't say? I'm going to suspect though, if they wouldn't remember to link to the Tumblr they were using on their LJ, it's not Tumblr exactly that's stealing them away.

[charmian]

I don't know. I know people who use it for fandom, and those who don't use it for fandom, so I can't say either way. There are so many different ways of using Tumblr.

I think Tumblr fits a niche between WP and Twitter, for people who want something bloglike than Twitter, with similar community features.

[foxfirefey]

Oh yeah, I'm not saying Tumblr's mainly for fandom, just that I wonder if it's stealing more from the fandom side of LJ side than the nonfandom--but my sample could definitely be skewed. In any case, it looks like most of the LJ people you're linking to are kinda fandom? At least, fic is being mentioned in the discussions and whatnot.

I think there's also Posterous in between...Tumblr and WordPress? Ha! I've lost one or two to that, I think, for unlocked content.

[charmian]

Nah, I understand what you meant, I was just saying that since I see people using it for both, I am not sure it's only a fandom phenom. These people are fans, but the same thing might be going on for interests other than fandom; anything is mainly public and lends it self to multimedia.

Yeah, there's Posterous too, and actually, the private blogging features there are better than Tumblr's IMHO, but since Facebook and Flickr seem to have private media mostly sewn up, Posterous doesn't seem to be really going in that direction.

[plazmah]

Have you noticed any LJ-->Tumblr migration?

I have, as a matter of fact. Many of the people who were once staples on my flist have now moved to Twitter or Tumblr... I find the more fannishly inclined stick with Tumblr.

I feel like there's less ~pressure~ on Tumblr compared to LJ and it's filters and friending policies and rant communities.

[charmian]

Huh, interesting.

So the relative lack of privacy features, and the following model creates less pressure. That could definitely be a feature, not a bug, to many.

[holyschist]

I haven't noticed a whole lot of Tumblr use in my social circle, period, probably because of the types of blogs I tend to seek out. Tumblr and LJ really seem like quite different beasts, though; I don't really view social networks as "taking users" from each other, but as users finding one SN suits their needs at the time better than another. (LJ didn't "take" me from Diaryland; I found that LJ's reading list and subscription format made the kind of interaction I wanted much easier than Dland's guest book and favorite diaries you had to click through manually format, so I gradually used LJ more and Dland less.)

[petronia]

Well, the music blogger types have congregated on Tumblr whereas a lot of the action had been on LJ previously (without ever having been fully concentrated there). The funny thing is that ppl agree it's not an ideal platform for longform writing, but reblogging does make it so that everyone in a loose network will eventually see a "hot topic" essay, because someone or other they're reading will reblog it in order to add comments. So it works well for that kind of critic community (social pressure to "keep up" with the topics du jour, spoilers not an issue). Tom Ewing compared it to the blogland public greens circa Pitas, did he not... XD The Q&A function is also heavily used, and Tumblr eventually did something so you can telescope the OP in a reblog, although I'm not sure how it works.

Fanart ppl, not surprisingly, seem to find Tumblr eventually more congenial than LJ. Too - picspams, fanvids, macros, and other multimedia are now more central to Fandom (have increased in relative prestige qua fan production) than they were 5 years ago - let alone stuff like Twitter RPs - and Tumblr is a far better platform for *curating* such items than LJ. I actually get the feeling that various forms of Fandom have colonized the "fuckyeah" Tumblr space, for instance. I haven't seen any longform text fanfiction on Tumblr as of yet, but I have seen quite a few multimedia narratives, webcomics, illustrated shorts et al.

[charmian]

Yeah, the did do that recently. I did wonder why they chose it over LJ as a software (I can definitely see it on design grounds), because so many other people I talk to seem to find Tumblr inferior for discussion.

Yeah, Tumblr is just superior for multimedia. Hah, why do you capitalize fandom, though?

[petronia]

I loosely use small-f fandom to mean "being a fan of something" and/or individual fandoms, and big-F Fandom to mean the self-identified online social group.

[vito_excalibur]

I LOL forever. Has standing athwart the internet yelling Stop, ever worked, in the history of ever?

[azurelunatic]

This whole thing is fascinating to me, admittedly from a distance. I've got at least two people who are doing the tumblr thing a lot; I know because they have it hooked into their Twitters. Now, if they had it set up to import to LJ, they'd then have a regular linkspam of the shiny on a pretty much daily basis. (Apparently people go to my Twitter & my Twitter import posts for fic recs, which was not exactly the first thing I thought of when I started doing that.)

Tumblr seems to be a great place for curation as an art form, not just original content as an art form.

[charmian]

Heh, I wonder how far this will go.

Hah, and now you can import Twitter into LJ automatically, it seems. What do people think of that so far?

I don't know, with some types of original content (or semi-original), it does seem to be popular.

[azurelunatic]

I haven't heard much about it so far! I did see various work on it being checked into changelog; one of the bits I saw prompted me to leave the unsolicited advice that the ability to import a locked twitter account to locked LJ entries without minsecurity would be a distinct advantage for LJ.

[charmian]

I wonder if they will do that? Did they seem to be importing locked accounts already, or was the feature originally only about public accounts?

[azurelunatic]

The checkbox in the settings explicitly says public tweets.

[sally_maria]

It seems to be something that varies very much depending on fandom/social circle. In my fandom, it seems to be very much used alongside LJ rather than replacing it, for pictures and multimedia, while the fic stays firmly on journals and/or at AO3.

[yvi]

Reportedly, according to Russian sources, in this update you'll also be able to crosspost a Tweet digest to LJ on a daily basis automatically

Russian source? Much more officially, it's been all over changelog :)

http://community.livejournal.com/changelog/9195909.html
http://community.livejournal.com/changelog/9173699.html
http://community.livejournal.com/changelog/9168914.html

I, personally, "get" neither Tumblr nor Twitter. I just don't really see the point in either.

[turlough]

I haven't noticed any LJ-Tumblr migration at all in my circle. I think I remember a bunch of people mentioning they'd gotten Tumblr accounts a while ago but after that nothing. The MCR faction of bandom seems pretty firmly ensconced on LJ so far. People have Twitters and use it to follow the band members and the specially created accounts that's RPing in the world of the upcoming album, but all the major fannish activities still take place on LJ.

[daweaver]

Some thoughts from off the top of my head:

1) In an ecosystem as large and diverse as Livejournal, there will be small pockets where people move to any and every service under the sun. There's probably a small pocket where everyone's gone off to exchange baked stone tablets marked with Greek characters.

2) Livejournal and Tumblr are different forms of performance art. Livejournal invites and encourages reaction to be read alongside the original post. Tumblr makes it very difficult to comment in the same way. Contributor expectations are, to some extent, managed by the system architecture. I'm thinking of the difference between a printed newspaper, and the website version with commentators going at it beneath the story.

3) Livejournal and Tumblr are different forms of performance art. Livejournal in general (and this clone in particular) tends to prefer text posts, and the generous entry limits make it possible for full essays to be posted in one go. As one of the commentators earlier mentioned, Tumblr prefers the brief - an iconic image, a single tune, a brief piece of writing. Livejournal is far weaker at mixed media collages - pictures are adequate, videos are a mess, audio remains a complete blind spot.

4) I suspect there has been a genuine reduction in activity (specifically, substantive posts) in many English-speaking corners of Livejournal. Some people have abandoned ship for The Facebook, others for Tw*tter, others for Wordpress, others will simply have got an actual life and given up. Livejournal's problem is that it isn't drawing from the pool of talented, quality text writers in English as well as it did in about 2004.

5) Some people will moan about anything.

Dammit, there's a full post lurking in here.

[charmian]

Hmm, if 1) is the case, then it's not really much of a story. I agree that 2) is a good point, though. It's part of the 'low pressure' aspect of Tumblr which many people seem to like. 3) is also very important. LJ just hasn't stepped up its game regarding media like Wordpress has (to name another older platform).

4) Yeah, nowadays people who are starting out (if there are many of them) are probably more likely to become either WP bloggers if they're doing it publicly, or post long notes on FB if they don't like the publicity.