Happily, i think i’ve determined the nature of a type of ecosystem in which Twitter, Tumblr, Google Reader and a full Blog all can coexist happily.
- Twitter can be the raw filter of what is going on daily in excrutiating minute detail. It is ultimately, a person hanging out w/ his or her mates instantaneously.
- A tumblr can be used to great effect as an open ended gathering and commentary device. If one sees an interesting piece of content for which you would like to provide some commentary, a Tumblr is a fantastic medium for expressing it.
- A full blog is still the medium of choice for any essay that one puts out for which comments are anticipated and welcomed.
As one can see, the three types of blogging vary across two dimensions, level of specificity of content and the where interactivity takes place (twitter is filterless, no direct commentary; tumblr is filtered, author commentary; full blog is high filter, author and reader commentary).
Even more conveniently, there’s no reason which these media can’t be chained together in a cascade. I fully intend on twittering my tumblr posts, and posting my blog essays onto my tumblr. Friends and followers can subscribe at the level of specificity they’d like, and will still get the content from the levels below them. And while i intend to this manually right now, there’s no reason why someone couldn’t hack up some blog-glue to make this sort of cascade automatic.
Oh yes, and Google Reader. Google reader is a fantastically cool application. That said the entire reason that i have a tumblr is because Google Reader doesn’t let me share things with notes. It still is an extremely convenient propagation method, but sometime you want to add your own content. Tumblrs let you do that in a manner that is almost as convenient as just sharing via google reader. And, i’ve subscribed to my blog and tumblr on google reader, to broadcast my writing to my reader friends ;)
