004: Week 11 Exercise - Active Research Assignment: Social Networking Exercise Pt.2

Design Analysis of “Tumblr”

Through the suggestion of a friend, I decided to get myself a tumblr for my new social network experience. I never really did much of micro-blogging before (aside from ‘status updates’ on facebook). The type of community it serves would be most likely those who don’t have the time or don’t prefer writing and would rather summarize what they would like to share with the world/their friends through a simple post containing either one image/quote/chat recording/etc. Like any new sort of social network site, it took a little while before warming up to its use but it was a little simpler as they actually walk you through your first post and customization. Refreshingly, it was very straightforward as I’m used to trying to get used to the multiple featured blog/social networks.

I noticed so far there seems to be limited to no interaction, especially according to Crawford’s definition. What I noticed is that after posting an image, people can comment (“note”) on it, “like it”, and/or re-blog what you posted onto their tumblr. If they re-blog, you can in turn leave a note of your own which makes this limited interaction and are more series of reactions. Given the nature of the site, this wasn’t too off-putting though I do wish you could make your comment on the site itself rather than doing it all on the dashboard. The main goal is more or less to share whatever nifty picture/quote/etc you’ve come across/like and you do this repeatedly to have a collective of it all in one convenient spot. You may even like something your friends or someone else has posted and want to add it to your own and thus,‘re-blog’. You see what kind of other wacky or beautiful things your friends or others would share as well.

The Social Objects are of course whatever the topic of the post is and the Social Verbs from what I was able to catch are “notes” (comments received), “followers” (people watching your tumblr for updates), and “like” (if someone likes what have to share, they will click on an icon or linked text to express their affinity for it). The numbers of followers you have are marks of socially successful individuals as of course, as it insinuates, you have a large number of people eager to see whatever cool thing you’ll share next! As the tumblr community of “Pretty Foods and Pretty Drink” proudly mention, they have OVER 30000+ FOLLOWERS !