Rafer sez:
Agreed, Fred. Hmm. Notes is lame. Reblog was a meme.reblog becomes notes. hmm.
Tumblr v4 beta — Yay!
Reblogged from Scott Rafer's Blog.
August 11, 2008, 8:28pm
data.insights.ideas
A systematic approach to all things Internet and how we, as information hunters, interact across the Web via data, insights and ideas.
Reblogged from Scott Rafer's Blog.
Looking for a few good Tumblrs
Which Tumblrs should I start following?
I’ve been using the Dashboard as my fourth source of information throughout the day (1. Techmeme 2. Hacker News and 3. Google Reader). There’s something about Tumblr, though, that offers a unique perspective about culture, commentary and life (in general) within New York City.
So, Tumblr, what do you think?
August 10, 2008, 12:41pm
marco wrote:
David’s video interview with Forbes.
Thanks for finding it, andrewfox:
I love Marco’s spotlight*. He looks so incredibly stressed and busy, they must have caught him at a tense moment.
* - bonus points for looking like a 6 year old did this.
They were filming this as I was talking on the phone to the reporter for this about Tumblr, Instapaper, and my views on media consumption.
/gratz to Tumblr David and Marco receiving well deserved publicity for creating such a awesome web tool… …I ♥ Tumblr!
Reblogged from AZspot.
August 10, 2008, 11:16am
“If you think Tumblr is just a content aggregator, perhaps you’re not doing it right.”
—
Marc LaFountain on this.
Agreed. Tumblr does offer an intentionally basic feed-import feature that can aggregate your content from other sources. But that’s not what Tumblr is for — it’s just one feature. Most good tumblelogs don’t even use it. (If we really intended for Tumblr to just be an aggregation service, that feature would probably be much more customizable and robust, since we wouldn’t need to “waste” time developing everything that powers the rest of the platform.)
There’s not much value in blind aggregation: human editorial choices bring value among content overload. Sure, you can post your entire vacation photo album to Flickr, but as a casual web-acquaintance following you on Tumblr, I’m happier if you just pick the best 1-3 photos to publish here.
It depends on your audience: if you’re only being read by people you know well in real life, they might want to see all 75 vacation photos. But if you want your tumblelog to have a larger, more general audience of people who aren’t necessarily interested in seeing so much of your activity, you bring great value by showing editorial restraint.
(via marco)
Reblogged from Marco.org.
July 28, 2008, 10:22am
Tumblr and SEO: A Case Study in Rapid Response
David’s quick implementation of SEO practices got glowing praises over on an SEO site. Well done!
I, too, was impressed by the response time on behalf of Tumblr. It was certainly a collective effort, but it’s impressive to see the care and passion Tumblr has for their community. Well done.
Reblogged from bjornstar.
May 23, 2008, 12:29pm
Tumblr, Why Can’t You Embrace Search Engines?
I’m not necessarily sure why there’s a problem with Tumblr and SEO, but I’m surprised there hasn’t been much uproar in the community. The initial conversation started some days ago, but I hope we can generate even more awareness so Tumblr can become “SEO acceptable,” that is search engine ready.
A few things I’d like to point out:
- I believe in Tumblr and the progress it’s making for both the platform and the micro-movement in general.
- I believe that even a personal and professional site should be available for search engines. In today’s world, there is no difference between the two.
Every week, I need to check Google Webmaster and make sure that my meta tag is indexable within the search engine. It’s a safe bet that I need to implement a new meta tag into my Tumblr because it “magically” disappears. Not sure what’s going on here:
Same goes for my sitemap. The post description and date always seem to cause havoc to this:
Where did my (231-74) 157 links go? Did they vanish into the Tumblr cookie jar?
Lastly, invalid dates galore:
Update: Discussion here.
Update #2: David Karp responds, below:
Thanks David.
May 22, 2008, 12:41pm
Hacking Tumblr - Add FeedBurner Stats to your Tumblelog
Want to track your RSS reader statistics for your Tumblr account? It’s actually really easy. You just need to know a little html.
To make this super easy, adding custom RSS providers and stat analytics to your tumblr account should be incorporated into our “settings” management section of our Tumblr accounts. I already requested this, but since that’s not available yet - let’s DIY it.
- All Tumblr accounts publish their RSS feeds to http://[your tumblr account here]/rss
So, for example, if your tumblr account was http://foo.tumblr.com you could then find your RSS source here http://foo.tumblr.com/rss
You need this URI (aka the full http://etc text link we just talked about) information when creating your FeedBurner account.
- Next, go get a FeedBurner account. Don’t know what feedburner is? You can read our feature FeedBurner interview over at Juxtaviews to learn more. But basically, it’s a free service that provide stats on who’s reading your tumblelog via RSS and even provides page view stats as well. So you kill two birds with one stone! After you create your account and add your feed, make sure to copy your need feedburner RSS URI. You’ll need it because we still need to add it into your Tumblr template.
- Ok, so you created your Feedburner account to track your RSS feed from Tumblr. But now you want to have FeedBurner also track your page views and general web usage statistics, right? You do this very easily by activating “Site Stats” in yor FeedBurner account, which you’ll see on the left hand side navigation. Walk-thru the process and copy the resulting html script code. You’ll need that in a moment as well.
- Alright, so we now have a FeedBurner URI for our RSS feed and some html for tracking website usage. Now it’s time to go back to your Tumblr account and click on “Change Settings.”
- Scroll down to the Theme section. If you are using one of the Tumblr default themes you will need to switch to “Custom” which is located alll the way to the right. Don’t worry, by clicking the “Custom” radio button it will copy the theme you are already using - which is great because you keep the same layout but we can now easily customize the layout and add cool things like this FeedBurner code.
- Now, you’ve already selected “Custom” theme, so it’s time to add your new FeedBurner code. Tip: When I edit the HTML for my custom theme I copy the HTML from the Tumblr editor and edit it in an external program (ie Textpad or Notepad). This just gives me more room to work with but you just as easy edit the HTML right in on the page using the Tumblr theme editor they provide.
- First, search for title=”RSS” … this will bring you to a tag and this is the tag you need to update with your FeedBurner RSS URI. You’ll notice there is a href=”/rss” attribute on that tag. You need to replace href=”/rss” with href=”YOUR FEEDBURNER URI HERE” so for juxtanews my link attribute is href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/Juxtanews”
- Ok, almost done. You’ve updated your RSS feed location. Now let’s add stats tracking. Remember that html code you received after you activated “Site Stats”? You’ll need that code now.
- This one is simple. Just scroll down to the bottom of the theme’s html and right before the closing BODY tag, paste in the FeedBurner html text. Yup, paste the entire thing - it’s not much.
- Now scroll down to the bottom of the “settings” page and click “Save Settings” and you’re done! Now you can track your RSS readers and who’s visting your site, how many times, what pages are they reading, what outbound links are they clicking on, etc, etc. Enjoy!
Reblogged from Juxtanews.
April 03, 2008, 3:41pm
