Our intrepid reporter Rosie Tillott reports on the rise of Tumblr….
As New York fashion week approaches bloggers have their gadgets and gismos at the ready, to blast the internet with what’s hot. But what blogging platforms will they be using?
Will it be through the traditional likes of wordpress and blogspot or will they succumb to the new kid on the block: Tumblr. “Web-blogs? Been there, done that. Facebook? It’s full of kids. Twitter? That’s so 2006, darling. No the smart thing to be doing online these days is Tumblr-blogging, which is to web-blogs what text messages are to email – short, to the point, and direct.”
Tumblr has taken on traditional forms of blogging by making it easy to publish whatever material you want using various forms of technology. They have even created their own app to ensure blogging is immediate with minimal effort. There are no constraints with what can be shared: from text to images, quotes to links, audio clips to videos.
Fashion and technology have never really walked hand in hand. Think back to the early days of e-commerce – the fashion world was frightened of the forwardness of technology. It took a while for them to embrace it. So Tumblr’s recent efforts to hurtle itself into vogue as the forefront of the fashion community is an intriguing thing.
The man behind the fashion frenzy is Rich Tong, who has been hired as the so called “fashion director” of Tumblr. Previous to this he was founder of the social fashion site Weardrobe. Tumblr is sending 20 fashion bloggers to New York fashion week so content can be screened on nyfw.tumblr.com . Tumblr are even going to the extent of hosting its own fashion week party.
With its chic clean interface and ease of use what is there not to love? Essentially fashion is all about image – so tumblr is really a true match made in heaven for fashionistas. Rich Tong announced “over the past year, fashion has emerged as one of the fastest growing segments of the Tumblr community, with 20% of our top 1000 blogs related to fashion.”
Whether the professional bloggers will follow suit is an entirely different question. There has been some dubious doubt about Tumblr’s amateur like approach; 50% of all posts are photos. Yes, it’s fantastic for collecting every moment of wherever you go. But my worry is it could become like a vast lost and found department of the entire blogosphere.
However, a picture can say a thousand words. Perhaps Tumblr would be better utilized as part of fashion brands social media arsenal, alongside Twitter and Facebook. Tumblr has so far attracted a community of young, influential, design-focused people. For brands this community equates to a high value demographic who have an appetite to engage with content and develop a genuine relationship with brands; thus turning follower into brand loyalists.
This week Andy Barber ponders on a few important questions…
