So over the weekend I attended a social dinner event here in the Williamsburg/Greenpoint area of Brooklyn. It was a great party with some really interesting people. As the night progressed, there were about four or five folks who asked me “do you Tumbl”? What an odd question I thought. Do I Tumbl?! I asked the first two people to explain themselves and they slightly recoiled in embarrassment or dismissed my inquiry as if I wouldn’t understand any explanation they could deliver. When the third person asked me this I was determined to know what they hell they were talking about. Now, I consider myself to be 110% in the know about anything pertaining to social media. I’m usually aware of new initiatives, programs, apps, site changes, whatever. Yet I had never heard of Tumblr. Oddly enough the explanations I received from people weren’t accurate. They had me convinced that Tumblr was A) like twitter and, B)a way to sync your blog with a community timeline. A) is kind of true but B) was not. Tumblr is probably the easiest way to start a blog. It’s incredibly simple (the website claims you can start blogging in about 10 minutes) and it is very similar to Twitter but more robust. You can add text, photos, chat, audio, and video. It also has to ability to be completely social. Much like Twitter you can follow people but you can also join or start groups. I can see this having a lot of potential for many different types of projects.

I found that there were about eight people at the dinner event that had planned a meetup. They all Tumbled and they all followed each other’s Tumblr blogs. They were all very much into cooking as this is what the event was mostly about. It was interesting to see a previously unknown online app bring people together like this. I was sure to know about an app with that kind of social power but before that night I never heard of Tumblr. I’m glad I now know about it and I’m seriously considering using it in the near future.

Also, not everyone (silver surfers) are up-to-date with the whole RSS thing and still do everything via email. Feedburner can allow your visitors to subscribe via email. You can specify when they get your emails, what the subject or title says, and even brand them by inserting your own logo. This is quite a fantastic service that’s easy to implement all while saving time and money by circumventing older email campaigning services.

Don’t forget to activate these great (not to mention free) services. Your blog will love you for it!