The juggernaut of online journals known as a blog has been around for over a decade and now it seems everyone is an author of a blog or two or twenty. Whether it is used as a virtual diary, a medium for spilling your guts to the world, a platform to announce events, an aggregation site for information, or an academic resource, a blog is quite cumbersome. There aren't too many blogs that keep updates to a minimum either in frequency, length, or both. Although the freedom exists to turn a blog into whatever the creator wants, over the years, certain expectations have been formed. A few paragraphs and maybe a photo along with a couple links seems to be the norm.
In 2006, Twitter gave members a focus for blogging by minimizing requirements. Limiting a single post to only 140 characters is quite the restriction and early users saw both potential and a fresh challenge for sharing stuff to others quickly. To many, Twitter was just too big of a leap where they were more confused than excited to experience microblogging.
About a year after the idea of Twitter came about, Tumblr launched. It boasts the power to allow users to "effortlessly share anything." Is it a blog? A microblog? I like to consider it a "diet blog" or "blog lite." Anyone is able to post text, pictures, video, music, and more like a blog only way simplified like how Twitter is so basic and uncluttered. If a blog is an iPod Classic and Twitter is an iPod Shuffle, then I guess that makes Tumblr an iPod Nano... Maybe it's better imagined if Twitter was a cheetah and a blog was a squirrel, then Tumblr would be a deer... Wait, if Twitter was hot porridge and a blog was cold porridge, then Tumblr would be... I don't know. I'm sure you, the reader, can come up with a better analogy. Anyway, Tumblr is an easy way to post what you want and how much you want. Tumblr could be the best transition from blogging to tweeting on the web.
