And now it’s time for the Pop Tech Jam Tech Term of the week where I do my level best to explain the geekspeak, nerdwords and communications jargon you may encounter on the Internet.
I’m sure most of you listening to this have at least a passing familiarity with the social network Tumblr. I recently had some issues with my Tumblr account and was forced to contact their tech support. In every interaction I had with the support team they kept referring to my “Tumblelog”. Not my “page” or my “blog” but my “Tumblelog”.
At first I thought it was just their way of branding their product with a snazzy marketing term but buried in the deep recesses of my memory I recalled having coming across the word tumblelog at least a year before Tumblr went live. When I actually remember something that happened more than a week ago I stand up and take notice. This was obviously developing into a real chicken and egg situation and because stuff like this keeps me up at night I had to look into it immediately. TO THE BROWSER!!!!
The most concise definition I could find for a tumblelog describes it as a stream of consciousness. A series of images, links, videos, quotes, and short blurbs that don’t necessarily share a common thread, but can collectively be pieced together to form a personality. If a conversations exists, it doesn’t exist on the tumblelog itself, but throughout the entire internet.
Wait, that sounds just like a microblog! TO WIKIPEDIA!
According to Wikipedia, the word tumblelog was first used way back in 2005 and Tumblr was born in August of 2007. They also claim the the term microblog has replaced tumblelog in web vernacular. EUREKA! The egg obviously came first in this caper. Tumblr was keeping the term alive and branding it as their own. Smart!
Other microblogging sites include Twitter, Plurk, and Jaiku. I tweet like a maniac, as most of you know, but I’ve never…um…plurked. Or Jaikued. Luckily I do have personal tumblelog…um…microblog at mynameisnotpablo.com. What? The cheap shameless l=plug was a little too much? Okay, I’m sorry about that…
Tumblelog, your Pop Tech Jam tech term of the week.
(That’s www.mynameisnotpablo.com…)
Be sure to check out Episode 03 of Pop Tech Jam!
