Has anyone else here purposefully NOT looked up “Tumblr” – thinking every single related post on Fluther (and there have been many – too many) is simply marketing effort to push their product?

I don’t go there generally, not just for this reason.

ermm this looks like it originated of the back of my question….
I asked the question because i was genuinely interested. is that not the whole point to this community?

Ah, I wouldn’t know anything about that really. I’ve had my Tumblr account for… nearly two years? Something like that. I found Tumblr through a friend who was using to post philosophical daily musings that she didn’t want to submit to her Facebook because, well, people are silly there.

I don’t advertise my Tumblr and am not more inclined to visit other users Tumblr accounts simply because they post a link to it. I’ve never really considered whether most posts about Tumblr here or elsewhere were marketing ploys and not actual people, but perhaps I am being a tad naive?

Now Twitter… I wouldn’t touch the thing with a ten-foot pole ;)

I have never gone there.
I’m just not interested or curious about it in any way .

Advertising can be great, though.

I have never been there, don’t even know what it is.

I’m 99% certain it’s not some kind of viral marketing ploy. I think if you were to check out what Tumblr was, you’d agree. I’m someone who has a Tumblr account, I barely ever post anything but I love watching what friends post.

Tumblr is a blogging system. You can post pictures, videos, links, or talk about something exciting going on. Other people can comment on them, or “reblog” (Repost them to their own tumblr page), among other things.
To me, it seems like the main demographic for tumblr is teenage girls. I may be completely offbase there, but that’s how it seems.

So all of those “Hey, can you follow me on Tumblr?” questions (Yes, we do nix them) I think are just some egotistical youths who think that higher numbers of followers = better, not really caring who those followers are.
The same phenomenon exists for twitter, myspace, facebook, and any other blog or other social networking platform.

The other kind of tumblr questions that pop up are “I really want my Tumblr to look like X, how do I do this?”
Because the layout of your own Tumblr page is completely customizable, you have a lot of people trying to do a lot of things. some of which, they simply don’t have the know-how for. but they’ve got their little hearts set on having X, so they look for outside help.

Unfortunately, for some reason, if you google “tumblr followers”, Fluther is one of the top results. That’s why I think you have so many people signing up asking “Will you follow me”/“How do I get followers” there.

I understand how you could see all of the Tumblr-related questions to be a viral marketing ploy, before you consider what Tumblr is. But after, it just doesn’t seem to be as likely as being a bunch of teenagers looking for more e-fame.

Tumblr is just a tool for bloggers, in the same way that Fluther is a tool for asking and answering questions. Most of the questions I’ve seen about Tumblr here have been questions about using the service but I don’t often see links to people’s individual blogs, and if I saw a question that was really just a spam to get traffic I would flag it.

My answer to “How do I get more followers on Tumblr?” is always the same three steps:
– Follow a lot of other Tumblr blogs
– Reblog a lot of their posts
– “Like” a lot of their posts
People will then start following you back, so long as you have interesting content for them to read.

I’m not sure I understand the question….do you mean when Jellies ask a question and reference Tumblr?

Outstanding answer @Sarcasm! Including the SEO why. Perfect answer.

And @downtide, @muppetish, and everyone. Thanks for the input!

@ipso But…but….

@SundayKittens wrote: “I’m not sure I understand the question….do you mean when Jellies ask a question and reference Tumblr?”

Yes.

It seems like many are new jellies. Too new. Sarcasm explained, rather exactly, why that happens. (Or rather, a good idea on what may be causing it.)

Ahaaaa, re-read it. Thanks.

I haven’t even been interested enough to be purposeful about not looking it up. I have no idea what it is and am very sure I can live without it.