The Social Media Information Blog Investigator’s Guide to Tumblr – “Founded in 2007,  Tumblr is a microblogging and social networking website. The platform, which was acquired by Yahoo in 2013, allows users to share text, images, quotes, links, video, audio, and chats. Tumblr’s appeal is that it allows users to be creative and build independent content on a personalized page with little effort. How does Tumblr work? A large part of Tumblr’s appeal to its users is the simplicity and ubiquity of the features it offers. In fact, they claim on their website that “Tumblr is so easy to use that it’s hard to explain.” Despite that statement, we will give it a try anyway. Registering for Tumblr requires only a valid email address. After creating a username & password, users are provided a URL for their blog which is associated with “.tumblr.com.” Depending on how the user wishes to utilize Tumblr, they are now able to follow other users and post original content to their tumblelog. Social interactions between users may vary widely. While there is certainly overlap, most Tumblr users fall into one of two categories:

1. Social Networking – These users are primarily interested in using Tumblr to curate content. Their usage is concentrated on interacting with other users and the content they’ve shared – commenting and connecting.
2. Self-Publishing – These users value Tumblr’s low barrier to entry for microblogging. Their activities typically focus on publishing content to their personal pages.

Both categories of user share potentially valuable information on Tumblr. Investigators should be aware of the differences and temper their expectations based on which grouping their subject aligns themselves…”