I had a play around with different sites for aggregating together different resources and social profiles recently (see next post for comparison). As a result I have started using Tumblr quite a bit. As a result I have found a new slice of my online identity which a) I didn't know needed expressing and b) is distinct from other parts of my online identity which are currently satisfied mainly by this blog and twitter with a bit of Facebook, LastFM, delicious, etc thrown in.
So how am I using Tumblr? Pretty much as you'd expect, it's my online dump for anything interesting I come across, any half thoughts I have, things I may want to use later on, stuff to share, etc. I never became a big social bookmarker, but I am using Tumblr partly for this function.
The thing that differentiates Tumblr from this blog is the close-to-zero threshold. My blog has become the place I think things through. This means I rarely post straightforward links, or comments. There are lots of mini-posts, half-formed ideas then that never see the light of day on Edtechie. I know what you're thinking: if this is the stuff that gets past his quality filter, I'd hate to see what doesn't make it - well now you can at Edtechie Dumbr! And what differentiates my use of Tumblr from Twitter is that Tumblr is more about resources, compared with social interaction.
To summarise: Twitter is where I tell people I am going to the cinema and discuss it, Tumblr is the place where I share a clip of that film and Edtechie is the place where I build it up into a laboured analogy for elearning.
The reason I prefer Tumblr for sharing resources over delicious is that it mixes in more ingredients and elements of the personal. But that is only a marginal reason, and others prefer to use Twitter, Facebook or their blog in the way I am using Tumblr (or to use Posterous instead of Tumblr). So here's my five 'duh well of course' conclusions:
- Your online identity continues to evolve
- There is overlap between different tools to achieve this
- There is no 'right way' to use a tool
- Share, share, share.
- Embed, embed, embed
