#emmalarsson

[silvieelizabeth]

Emma Larsson

[basilwhatley]

Artist:  Emma Larsson

[schizomaniac14]

Week 10

So, I'm just gonna go straight to the point: I am not a fan of Tumblr, and in this log post I am going to explain why. But to understand my arguments, you need to know something about me first.

I am not new to blogging, in fact I do it everyday. I blog using Facebook, a site I use to stay in touch with family and friends, to see what they are interested in or likes, or shares. On Facebook I can see, then and there, what I have posted and receive responses on it. I like the comments and the likes and the sharing. I like that I can chat with my "followers" and that I can sort and group the followers into different categories. My "followers", also known as my friends, can be controlled by me. Not in the real world, of course, but on Facebook I can choose and decide which of my friends can see what I post. 

Now, Tumblr on the other hand makes that control go away. All my followers are equal and they can all see what I post. In fact, not even people who follow me, can see what I post. The setting is too open for me, and I don't quite feel like I fit into the design of the network.

I do, however, like Pinterest. If you remember the last log post, I wrote about the similarities and the differences about Tumblr and Pinterest, and referred to an article (or a blog post) that dealt with that particular subject. Looking back on my last log post, want to analyze one of the quotes from it:

"Pinterest encourages contributions to their community and connects users with others through visual interests, while Tumblr encourages personal passions that grow their community which, in turn, spreads popular posts amongst their users."

What the author suggests here is that there is a difference between interests and personal passion - which I very much agree on. To have passion is more than just having an interest in something. Thus, Tumblr is more based on emotion than interest, and that's just not something for me.

Besides my arguments of Tumblr, 1) Being something I don't feel I can have control over in terms of followers, and 2) fitting more into the "passion/emotion" category, I have another reason to why I don't prefer the site, and that is the interface design and the goals of it. I feel like I need to put more time and effort into Tumblr, than I need to using Pinterest.

On Pinterest, I don't care if I don't get a "like" or if someone "re-pins" the things I've pinned. I don't look for other people's approval. I only seek what I am interested in, and what I would like to bookmark. If people wants to follow my boards, that's up to them. But I will not seek inspiration for an audience. Tumblr on the other hand encourages audiences, and thus the interface design is a little bit more complicated and the site has more ways to post something than Pinterest has. 

I am aware that I make it seem like there are very distinct gaps between the mediums I mention, but there isn't. There are probably as many similarities as there are differences. This is just my opinion of the site, my experiences using this medium. We all look for something that will fit our needs the best, and this just wasn't a good match for me, even though the medium is similar to something else that fits me better.

[schizomaniac14]

Week 9

Lately I have been thinking a lot about Pinterest the similarities between that social media site and Tumblr. The two sites are quite similar, however, while both SNSs are mostly about liking and pinning (reblogging) something to your own customizable boards (or blogs) which people can follow, Tumblr allows the user to create their own content, to upload their own images and write their own texts - right there on the platform. Pinterest doesn’t have that feature, and it doesn’t need it. Pinterest is about what interests you and sharing links (articles, images, GIFs, videos…). Tumblr is a micro-blogging platform, the content that is posted requires users to treat their media like blog posts. Of course we also have differences in interface design and overall front-end design.

I found a great article specifically about the differences of the two social media sites.

http://omnomedia.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/tumblr-vs-pinterest/

The author is a woman named Meaghan who is blogging about Social Media (using Wordpress). In her article she mentions the difference of the general purposes of the two sites:

"Pinterest encourages contributions to their community and connects users with others through visual interests, while Tumblr encourages personal passions that grow their community which, in turn, spreads popular posts amongst their users."

She goes on to talk about Audience statistics, which she summarizes as follows:

"Pinterest appeals to middle-aged, crafty women and Tumblr to college-aged, passionate men and women."

"Passionate men and women". Passionate. I think that is a pretty good word for the users of Tumblr. They all care about something, and they want to share it.

Personally, I prefer Pinterest to Tumblr (and I am not middle-aged, nor looking for tutorials of how to knit a sweater). But more about that in the next log post.

[schizomaniac14]

Week 8

How do people get famous using Tumblr? And how long does it take?We've been posting stuff every week, and we’re not really getting a big response out of it.

So how do people do it? Even though it is not in our intentions to become famous online, we need followers so we can analyze them and try to understand their identities and why they chose to follow us.

I am a big fan of YouTube, and I subscribe to a lot of channels on that platform. One of them is a girl who likes to play video games. Her name on YouTube is DexterityBonus, but she’s more known for her overall online alias: Dodger.

Dodger has been doing videos on YouTube for a few years now. She has two channels, one which is more like a personal vlogging channel (created in 2011), and another one which she uses to post her gaming experiences on (created a few years before the vlogging channel was created), and she has over 400 000 subscribers. She is also active on other social media, like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and you guessed it - Tumblr.

The Tumblr account was set up around the time when the vlogging channel was created. This got me thinking that maybe she got a lot of followers just by being famous already. But what if you aren't famous already?

I searched online and found a link to a wikiHow-page on how to be famous on Tumblr.

http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Tumblr-Famous

The article states rather obvious things though, like promoting the blog, choosing a good theme and a good name that people remembers easily, but it also brings up a lot of interesting things regarding identities and making your "content follow-worthy".

Maybe we should start creating our own content? Or work more on the "personality" of the blog?

[schizomaniac14]

Week 7

We have followers! And, no, I’m not counting my, Mari’s or Linda’s personal accounts. These ones came from “the outside”. We have: kpurmysunshine1304, madness-of-spend-days, and kaslaurbanlakme following the blog. Interesting names for sure…

Two of the followers are posting and re-blogging quite horrific images and GIFs (probably relating to our horror-identity) while the third, kpurmysunshine1304, doesn't seem to have a blog at all. The person has not posted anything on his or her blog, so I figure that he or she bust simply just be a “follower”. The person in question seem to just enjoy the posts of his or her followers and has no intention of re-blogging or posting anything him/herself.

I think that this is a fun way to look more into the identities of the people who identify themselves with our blog. It’s a little like looking at the reflections of yourself. Now, I’m not saying that all followers of any kind of blogger relates to that blogger or are like reflections of that blogger. To follow a blog you can be a fan or a hater or something else. But you can also be interested in just a small portion of what the blogger actually posts. With our followers (the two similar ones), I can see why they are following us. I can see the connection to the horror-theme. However with the other person, the person who doesn't post him/herself - that person is a mystery. Is the person a fan of horror, Japanese food, beauty or just the mixture? Is it someone we know? Maybe it’s the name “Schitzomaniac” that made him/her subscribe to us? Who knows?

I also thinks this is interesting within the concept of communities. Now that we have followers it feels like we have been accepted into a certain type of community (even though it is a very dark and gloomy kind of community). I hope that we can get followers who represents other types of communities as well, like Japanese food lovers or beauty gurus.

[schizomaniac14]

Week 6

And we’re on! The blog is up!

This blog is part of an assignment focusing on the subject of online identities and communities. How online communities are formed and how can we describe the identities that are formed online. How we can describe the behaviors of the community members based on the affordances of the mediums they use.

Our group have chosen to focus on Tumblr, a social network site where you can blog about whatever you want, and reblog what other people have blogged about. You basically search for a keyword, or a tag, and see what other people have blogged about in that subject. Images and GIFs dominate the site over text. What might make the reblogging of images more personal is that the user can choose to retag the image to his or her liking or purpose.

You can follow other users, or “Tumblr:ers”, and by doing so join their “communities”, however interacting directly with the blogger is a little bit more difficult. When visiting a person’s blog on Tumblr you can only interact with what that person has posted (you can share it, reblog it or like it). You can also use tagging to create a community, with the tag as the glue keeping the community together.

Schitzomaniac is the name of the Tumblr-blog that me, Linda and Mari have created. We wanted to create a blog which we all could post, or reblog, things in. To play with the concept of identities we all came up with our own identity, however, we are always posting as one - hence the name “Schitzomaniac”. We each chose a subject to post about. I chose beauty and makeup, Mari chose Japanese food, and Linda chose horror. The mixture and the juxtaposition of the posts on our blog, we were hoping, would get people interested in our blog and start following it.

Personally I think that we need something more, a second strategy to get people hooked to our blog. But we’ll see what happens.