Member-only story
Live By the Platform, Die By the Platform
A tale of Twitter, Tumblr, and (maybe) Medium
While everybody else was predicting, mourning, or celebrating the apparent implosion of Twitter, I was concerned with another dying social network.
Many years ago, I started a Tumblr account on which I’ve posted pretty much daily — usually a historical artifact or image with a little explanation of it. Why did I pick Tumblr? I don’t remember; it was probably a whim. The blog was mostly a way to kill time when I didn’t have anything better to do at work. It’s been a really fun way to learn and share what I’ve learned.
I’ve put up a lot of these little posts in other spaces, too. For a while, I posted them on Facebook, but then I decided to ditch Facebook altogether. I tried Instagram for a bit but never got much traction. Recently, I’ve cross-posted to Twitter and built a little following there. But the Tumblr was the mothership of my little history-blogging effort.
Despite the fact that Tumblr is decidedly non-cutting-edge — it has been declared dead again and again — it was a happening place for me. Last time I checked, I’d amassed over 80,000 followers there. I got a decent amount of engagement on each post. It was nice!
