Dreamwidth + Tumblr?

[charmian]

In the dw_news comments, some suggested that DW make Tumblr a site you could link to with an icon, which IMHO might be a bit hard because Tumblr allows you to use domain names fully for your Tumblr site. IMHO Tumblr is sort of like a hybrid between Twitter and Wordpress, and the way it allows for (free) domain name usage is more on the WP side.

DW could implement a Tumblr import. Probably Tumblr's API can handle this, because you can import Tumblrs to Posterous and Wordpress.com.

Why DW might want to create more Tumblr integration, some thoughts:


1. Tumblr's star is rising, for now. It's where the new bloggers are.

2. Precisely because DW is different from Tumblr, it might offer an alternative for some Tumblr users. In other words, DW has some features which Tumblr lacks, whereas DW has few features which LJ lacks. I think nowadays LJ's killer app is not the privacy features, but the comms.

3. Possibly, DW has reached market saturation among LJ users. Trying to promote DW in a new market might lead to more potential DW subscribers.



Some links:
Requiem for Livejournal

An article about LJ's popularity in Russia

Quote from Anton Nossik: "In Russia, LiveJournal's primary function has shifted from social networking to mass media, so it makes little sense trying to figure out how many people are actively blogging in Russian LJ -- tens or hundreds of thousands. It's the readers that count, and the readership has been growing quite steadily over the last five years."

Comments

[troisroyaumes]

Hm, I have a Tumblr that is under a separate domain name, and when I input username.tumblr.com, it forwards directly to the domain. So I think the user icon linkage is still doable?

I think a lot of Tumblr users might find Dreamwidth's array of options overwhelming--a lot of Tumblr bloggers use it for its simplicity--so I'm not sure if they're the best market to target. But it's true that Tumblr is growing more than any other platform I've seen.

I wonder if Dreamwidth might implement a posting bookmarklet like the ones Tumblr and Wordpress have for easy posting? Hm, maybe I should put that in as a suggestion.

[matgb]

What sort of posting bookmarklet would you want to see? There is one on LJ that I always found slightly annoying, and it's acutally fairly easy to set one up for DW--for example, have a look at the buttons at the bottom of each of my posts (they also show on my reading page which is what they're for), annoyingly, the only one I can't get to work that should is Tumblr as they've done somethign weird with the backend of their bookmarklet.

Essentially, depending on what you want, it's either doable or should be done, but everyone seems to want something slightly different.

And I concur with domain linage on Tumblr, drawback is if it always redirects, who will know what the actual username is? It doesn't seem to display on those that've got a domain set up, but I might be missing something obvious (I don't use mine much, don't get on with it)

[troisroyaumes]

What I want is a bookmarklet to put in my browser bar so I can automatically compose posts to Dreamwidth while browsing on other sites. Maybe I can adapt one from your "Repost to Dreamwidth" bookmarklet, though ideally what I'd like is a pop-up window with a slimmed-down version of the Dreamwidth posting interface rather than being redirected to the update page on Dreamwidth. The Tumblr one is especially well-designed because it allows you to pick the image you want to share, quotes the selected text, codes the video embed, etc. based on the page you're looking at.

If you follow that particular Tumblr, the username will show on your dashboard/following list, regardless of the domain redirection.

[azurelunatic]

I wonder if you might be able to do something useful with http://www.dreamwidth.org/mobile/post ...

[matgb]

For the former, it's almost certainly doable, and probably easy, but requires backend stuff and JS, neither of which I can do, but it's probably something I would use, so worht suggesting.

And the follow page on Tumblr makes sense to show usernames, which means people will know them regardless, which is good.

[charmian]

Yeah, I think the stuff about being able to pick the image you want to repost is especially important, although to do it well, wouldn't DW need photo-hosting, which IIRC isn't available yet?

[charmian]

I think so, but then you'd need to know the original username as well.

Yeah, I think it'd only be appealing to some, but on the other hand, it might be better than going the opposite way and appealing to people who use options that DW doesn't have?

I think that might be a good idea too.

[sub_divided]

I worry about Tumblr disappearing more than I worry about Livejournal. The Russians are keeping LJ alive and aside from the spam problem, there haven't been any recent major security breaches. Did you see the recent thing about a Tumblr developer editing live code and accidentally making the database code public - including user names and (encrypted) passwords? Yikes. I'm not sure I trust them to know what they're doing, technically, five years down the line. There's nothing of value on my Tumblr currently, it's all real-time reaction to what other people are doing and won't mean anything to me later, but I'm glad to have my Livejournal as an archive. PERHAPS, so Tumblr users might be convinced to feel the same way about Dreamwidth - that it's where you put long-form content you don't want to disappear. The fact that you can't search makes it hard to sell as an archive, though.

[foxfirefey]

Not to mention the Russians knows how to monetize LJ, even if it leads to some offputting things. They make LJ worth their while; it's easy to underestimate how important that is to a large site's survival.

Tumblr has had a lot of investor funding, but doesn't have ways to make that kind of money yet--selling themes is nice, but I doubt it'll keep the wolf from the door. Some day the ways they'll try to make money will probably upset some people, rightly or wrongly.

[charmian]

I do wonder though, if LJ is actually profitable, especially the English side. It's not something we can infer very well, however.

[charmian]

As an archive, it does matter that LJ probably won't disappear now, I think... but, as a blogging site, it does matter if few people on the English side are currently using it. As the English side erodes, I do wonder what they're going to do as the revenue goes down with it, though.

I saw that about Tumblr. I don't think that people really care much though, because few people put sensitive material there, and when you offer things for free, people will hold you to a lower standard.

The archive thing holds fast as long as Tumblr lacks a good archive backup function, IMHO. But yeah, searching your own journal being a paid feature does make archiving harder to sell.

[foxfirefey]

The English side of LJ that has close knit networks and buys paid accounts might be eroding, but I feel like SUP's been pretty proactive about strengths--ONTD is a juggernaut that they've started monetizing, for instance, and it fits in with the mass media model Nossik is talking about.

I bet even for the English side, it's more about readers than bloggers now. Not to mention LJ has a vast backlog of content that's had ads put on it by now, since the majority of journals and communities show ads to logged out viewers.

[charmian]

Yeah, ONTD fits in with the mass media part, but I wonder if it can make up for the rest, economically. (Also, aren't the ads on the rest sort of bottom of the barrel?)