An observation
I think what made Tumblr the big hit of today, is—aside of some great UI work they’ve done that certainly helps—the simple fact that they largely copied LiveJournal and put it in a Web 2.0 context. Now I don’t mean to diminish the creative work and innovation that the people behind Tumblr have poured into the site, but let’s face it: LiveJournal did one thing great and it did it more than ten years ago: the “dashboard” (what Tumblr calls dashboard, LiveJournal calls “Friends page”, but it’s effectively the same). Aside of LiveJournal, I really can think of only two social networks that have executed on this concept really well: Flickr and Tumblr. And both are tremendously great sites with millions of very happy, loyal users.
What LiveJournal didn’t do, Tumblr did: keep up with the times. LJ feels extremely “Web 1.0”, even today after the plethora of updates they’ve done over the past few years. Tumblr, on the other hand, feels remarkably fresh and “with it”; the thriving theme-ing community is one piece of evidence for this.
LiveJournal was a hugely successful site in its glory days, but has since faded into insignificance for a large portion of its users. Many of those, I’ve noticed, are currently on Tumblr. It’s all about usability from a higher perspective, and in that sense Tumblr has simply done a great job, like LiveJournal before it—ten years ago.
I don’t disagree with a single word of that: it struck me recently that Tumblr was, basically, a modern LiveJournal for public stuff (plenty of people I know still use LiveJournal for restricted-view things). The social aspects of Tumblr, coupled with the simplicity of it all, set Tumblr apart from other blogging platforms (whether or not they have “micro” in their name). Tumblr’s power is executed through just three buttons: ♥, reblog, and follow.
