Sharing and spreading ideas and information, collecting pictures and pieces of information, connecting to other people or simply looking for some creative inspirations; there are many ways to do so especially since the world-wide web exists.
ISSUU was just one example of a platform where you can do so. And of course social communities like Facebook or Twitter are well-known for their power to spread ideas and usability for marketing purposes. But there are other rising platform, which are captivating people all over the world and should not be underestimated.
In the next blog posts I’m going to share some other online communities, which offer a big variety of ideas, inspirations and collections.
Have you ever heard of Tumblr and Pinterest? NO? Well, in short they are all online communities, where people around the world share their ideas, pictures and other interesting stuff.
Alright, they seem to be not very different from each other at the first glance. But there is when you look closer; and these tiny (or even bigger) differences make every platform different, attracting other types of users.
So what’s the difference between Tumblr and Pinterest?Tumblr is a platform for creativity, Pinterest is a user interface layered that allows you to pull things together and visualize them in these boards. And, em, we actually see Pinterest as a kind of complement, so in other words a lot the pictures that you see on Pinterest come from Tumblr, we are totally cool with that, drives a lot of traffic down to Tumblr, we drive traffic back up to them. Right now basically is a very useful way for people to organize things that they’ve seen on the internet and also different sources including Tumblr, so we at the moment don’t see them as a competitor.
So let’s have a closer look on Pinterest and Tumblr.
Pinterest looks like this:
Like Caroline observed, Pinterest is mainly an online pin board or mood board, where people people collect and share things they like. Some people even use Pinterest to collect ideas for their wedding planning or to collect recipes. On top of that, you can categorize your pins into groups.
On the contrary, Tumblr is a more blogger like platform where you can post photos, music or little texts. So it is much more similar to Twitter or a simplified WordPress version.
When describing the difference between Tumblr and Pinterest, Laura writes the following:
Pinterest is more sanitary, a cleaned up version, a post-Giuliani New York City. Tumblr on the other hand is a playground for the bizarre, the rare, the grotesque and the beautiful. While Pinterest has baking recipes, Tumblr will teach you how to get high on nutmeg. Tumblr is inherently cooler, but Pinterest makes more sense — and it has a nifty ‘Pin It’ button that you can drag to your bookmark bar and press every time you find an image worthy of being uploaded to your page.
In fact, Pinterest seems to be much more a bookmarking tool for collecting ideas, whereas Tumblr gives space and freedom for unique characters expressing their mood.
The Tangential expresses the key differences this way:
So there are big differences; for this reason each platform is more or less suitable for marketing purposes and attracts different kind of users.
In the next blog posts we will examine different factors regarding Pinterest and Tumblr, contrasting them, analyzing which platform is suitable for what type of user, what type of business and have a closer look on problems both communities are facing.
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“Get inspired” is exactly the right keyword here. Your blog post definitely inspired me as soon as I saw the two pictures of Tumblr and Pinterest. I have to admit that I frequently use Tumblr, too. On Tumblr you have all these beautiful and inspiring images which are we really nice to look at, but there is probably not as much intellectualism behind it as there might be in the case of Pinterest. I think Laura is right when saying “Tumblr is inherently cooler, but Pinterest makes more sense(…)”. People that share their ideas and creative findings on Tumblr seem to be wilder and crazier than on Pinterest. Like Laura I believe that it’s a playground for the rare and the bizarre. I am not that much of a Pinterest user but still I‘ve explored it several times and what I have observed is that Pinterest is really neatly ordered, the colors are more soft and have a pastel shade and that’s why I got the impression that Pinterest is more innocent and the perfect platform to share recipes or plan your wedding. You would never do that on Tumblr. No wonder that the Vice President of Tumblr doesn’t see Pinterest as a competitor.
Although others might say that Tumblr is more a blogger-like platform, I think that it is not. Most of the time you just see pictures but no real blog entries that deal with important or interesting topics. During my research for my “Sex sells… not!” blog post I read different opinions of bloggers that criticize Tumblr and claim that it is like a youporn platform for hipsters. Actually I never looked at it from such a perspective and honestly I wouldn’t go that far.
The Tangential summarizes the differences quite well. I liked it very much because it especially highlights the extreme sides of both platforms and at the same time it lays bare the truth, for example “Which hashtag will lead me to the weirdest shit to stare at while I’m stoned?” or “Always seeking motivational quotes(…)” which actually applies to Tumblr as well.
So to sum it up: I liked your post very much, the quotes that you have chosen express the most important differences and surprisingly they even coincide with my impression and the grey box is really funny but still true. One thing that you could have added is include more pictures of Tumblr ,for example, in order to show how creativity is expressed there. There are just too many beautiful pictures that deserve to be displayed here ♥
Do you know how they came up with names for those platforms? What does Tumblr or Pinterest stand for? Maybe Pinterest is a combination of “Pin it“ and “interest“ or “interesting“? By the way, have you ever checked out http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit/visitor ? You could write about it,too:)
I’m looking forward to your next post and I’m curious which problems they have to face. Maybe you can find some criticism,too?
Thanks for this very interesting post! I have to admit, that I only use tumblr very seldom and I haven’t evern heard of Pinterest before. The only reason I used Tumblr for was to find some good pictures, so I don’t really know much about the Tumblr ” attitude” but your presented it very well and convincing. The comparisons you made were easy to understand but still informative and painted a great picture of those two platforms. Also, the different opinions you included in your post were totally appropriate, because they showed how different people see and use the two platforms. Since I don’t have an opinion of my own on this, I would have enjoyed reading what you think about this, do you prefer Tumblr or Pinterest? Or do you use both for different purposes? I hope I’ll have the time to check those platforms out in more detail!
Great post!
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