austpicious:

I’m starting to realize that tumblr isn’t big on substance or originality, but it seems to suit the many people who want to use it a ‘re-blog-by-adding messages-and-sending-around-to-my-friends’ kind of chain letter.

Some of the tumblrs formerly known as stumblers (and the most publicly dissatisfied ones at that) are turning tumblr into another circle-jerk enclave of recycled images and regurgitated words.

I’m seeing the same alts, the same obsessions and the same lack of meaningful content. Which is fine, for those who like it quick and easy. Tumblr makes it simple to populate pages with content, but from what I’m seeing, it ‘s not providing much by way of creative entertainment on anything other than quite a superficial level.

After three months of giving tumblr a fair try, my initial enthusiasm (and I was VERY enthusiastic) has waned. I have actively explored many other tumblogs to try to find good ones to follow, but they are few and far between.

I’m not going to wax evangelical, and I’m not going to bang on about it on other forums or make any more posts about it here.
I leave the ‘broken recording’ method to others, so here’s my point.
I DO have one ;-)

For stumblers who never really embraced tumblr, and for those who are still searching for an alternative to SU, I’ve found posterous to be quite a surprise package.

As a blogging platform it appears deceptively low-key, and that’s its great appeal. There’s nothing obviously flashy here, but think of anything you’d like to do with a blog - and on posterous, it already works.
You can’t send shares or messages the SU way, but you can subscribe to people, you can enable comments on your posts, you can embed virtually anything you want (widgets, videos, music ) and you can customize the themes with a little extra work.

A downloadable bookmarklet makes it possible to add content from other webpages and you can even upload your posts - attachments and all - via email. Yes, email - your own, or web based.

Posterous will host multiple pics as an image gallery and allow you to have multiple other blogs and group blogs, and it will do it all efficiently.
Posterous will also export your posts to most other social networking sites. This week I’ve been creating my posts there and enabling the auto export so that it sends to my tumblr and twitter. It does that seamlessly, preserving the formatting and links.
Conversely, I experimented with importing - and all my tumblr posts were imported intact. The import / export / bookmarklet facilities do not work well with SU, just in case you want to try. Smarter tech heads than me might possibly find a way, but the way SU is coded isn’t compatible with blogging platforms, as far as I can see. Mainly because SU ISN’T about blogging and doesn’t want to be.

Best of all, the four guys who run the place are approachable and responsive - and that’s a huge plus. That type of attitude is SO refreshing, and diametrically opposed to what long-suffering stumblers have had to deal with.

There are some incredibly interesting people on posterous. Writers, media people, tech people and skilled bloggers.
There are also plenty of people just putting their own stuff there to share with others. I’m not claiming to be able to create some kind of extraordinary blog, but I like having the opportunity to at least try.
After a couple of weeks there, I’ve barely scratched the surface, and I’m constantly getting sidetracked by some excellent content.

I guess that’s what’s been missing for me with tumblr. Content.
Stuff to read about and think about…not rehashed angst or pretty fluff.

Most of my tumblr posts will in future be originating from my posterous place