Taking a tumble for multimedia tumble blogs

It’s only spring but I’m already planning a summer fling with Tumblr.com. Check out this free, easy, fantastically fun blogging platform and you might be smitten, too.

The service, launched in February by New York-based Web development firm Davidville Inc., has drawn more than 50,000 sign-ups by capitalizing on the subgenre of “tumble blogs” or “tumblelogs.”

As the names suggest, such sites collect thoughts as they tumble out of a blogger’s mind. But a better term for them would be “stumble blogs.” They’re perfect for posting any interesting quotations, instant-message exchanges, conversations, video clips, photos, sound files and story links you stumble across – with little or no added commentary.

Why e-mail cool finds to friends when you can showcase them on a tumble blog? Some users liken the form to scrapbooking. But I favor the tasty analogy Web designer Philip Arthur Moore served up on bigsquaredot.com: “Tumblr is to blogging what sprinkles are to sundaes.”

What’s really sweet is how Tumblr delivers unto the masses a blog style pioneered by the hipster Web heads behind Anarchaia, project.ioni.st and other early tumblelogs. (Check out the Tumblelist directory at tumblelog.co.uk for more links.)

Signing up with Tumblr is as simple as selecting a site name and password. Users then click buttons to create six predesigned entry types: link, quote, photo, video, conversation or “regular post” (for those compelled to share deep thoughts like an old-school blogger).

Paste a famous maxim into a quote post and it instantly appears on your site in large type fronted by quotation marks. Conversations look like snippets of instant-message exchanges. Link posts entice readers with single lines of hypertext.

Where short-form blogging service Twitter.com asks users “What are you doing?” Tumblr’s central question could be “What are you seeing and hearing?” Unless you’re a safecracker, stuntman or spy, the answer to the latter query likely will be much more interesting to readers.

Tumblr’s so user-friendly it takes a minute to figure out what’s missing. Adventurous bloggers can pull their Flickr photo streams, YouTube video feeds and even (shudder) Twitter blatherings onto Tumblr sites. They also can e-mail photo and text posts directly from mobile devices. But visitors can’t comment on Tumblr entries, and there’s no menu of widgets to clutter the pages.

That elegant simplicity might actually trump the “pimp my blog” aesthetic of most personal publishing platforms. It takes the same blink of time to create an entry as it does to read one – even less when tumble bloggers use a special Favorites link (called a “bookmarklet”) to instantly “Share on Tumblr” elements of any site they visit.

Another striking thing about the platform: It’s so irresistible, most stories about it include a link to the writer’s Tumblr page.

Mine’s at blogspotter.tumblr.com.

Silence of the blogs

OneDayBlogSilence.com has designated April 30 a “day of blog silence” to remember victims of the Virginia Tech shooting spree.

Steli Efti, a German entrepreneur whose projects include the online learning community SuperSchool.com, came up with the idea a few hours after hearing about the massacre.

“We had to do something to express … our compassion for the people who lost their loved ones,” Efti said via e-mail.

Predictably, the effort generated both support and opposition from blogworld. Plainjanemom.com even pledged to link to bloggers who commemorate the tragedy by writing about it instead of keeping mum today.

“We didn’t think that people might be against this campaign and that the echo would be so loud all over the blogosphere,” Efti said. “But most people … have shown us overwhelming support.”

When some suggested the day of silence honor all the world’s victims, Efti endorsed the notion.

Just another example of collaboration making a good idea better.