Definition of "Tumblr"

What is different about “quick blogging” tools like Twitter (which imposes a strict character count so it can be easily used on a cellphone) and Tumblr (which allows longer messages as well as photographs) is the degree to which people use them for spontaneous and almost continuous communication.

2007 November 4, Noam Cohen, “The Global Sympathetic Audience”, in The New York Times‎

There are other services for reporting where you’re traveling (Dopplr) or for quickly tossing online a stream of the pictures, videos or Web sites you’re looking at (Tumblr).

2008 September 5, Clive Thompson, “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy”, in The New York Times‎

If Facebook is the social network for online identification and authentication, and Twitter is for communication, Tumblr fulfils a different role: self-expression.

2012 March, Tom Cheshire, “Tumbling on success: How Tumblr's David Karp built a £500 million empire”, in Wired UK‎

Fangirling on your own behind your computer screen is fine and dandy, but once you’ve seen the most popular fan blogs and fansites, the Tumblrs with the most followers, or the message boards where everyone seems to know one another, you’re gonna want in on that excellent fandom party.

2015, Sam Maggs, “Engage! Become an Active Member of Your Fandom”, in The Fangirl’s Guide to the Universe: A Handbook for Girl Geeks, Philadelphia, Pa.: Quirk Books

But despite its confusing themes and erratic jump cuts between unnamed personas, the sentiments expressed are quite familiar to anyone who has visited the Tumblrs of teen girls – as are the images and linguistic choices.

2018, Zoe Alderton, The Aesthetics of Self-Harm: The Visual Rhetoric of Online Self-Harm Communities, Routledge

Like Cole, Myers also cites the 2014 Allied Media Conference as a turning point, an opportunity to meet many of the people behind the Tumblrs they followed and with whom they chatted.

2021, Moya Bailey, “Alchemists in Action against Misogynoir”, in Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women’s Digital Resistance, New York University Press, published 2022, page 168