Yesterday, Tumblr announced on its staff blog that the social media platform had undergone a major change. Similar to Twitter or Facebook's Timeline, Tumblr is now "testing" the implementation of real-time notification updates on users' dashboards.
Now, Tumblr aficionados will be notified each time they get a new follower, a re-blog, a comment, or a 'like.' This strategy may be attempt to give Facebook a run for its money in terms of being the most personalization-friendly and interactive social media tool–or simply the most addictive, as your Tumblr feed will now be a constant stream of self-affirmation. Look:
Image via Tumblr
This is a huge update for the site, as it now situates Tumblr interactions in the present, making the social tool more in-your-face and potentially omnipresent (while you're online). It's bad news for those who are sick of getting hit with flashing boxes every time they open their internet browser.
Tumblr founder and CEO David Karp also highlighted other evolutions in his brainchild in a post and accompanying video published on January 25th. New features include customizable drag-and-drop photos, speedier uploads, and that re-blogging now takes place on the dashboard.
The promotional video claims that these changes are "huge" and that "so much of the effort went into refinements that hopefully you won't even notice." This sounds like a feeble PR attempt to tranquilize social media fanatics' consistent fear of change.
It's a surprise that it took Tumblr so long to add the real-time notifications, but now the site might overcome Twitter as your all-time favorite way to distract yourself at work. Mark Zuckerberg may be King off Social Media, but Karp and company may now be the Prince.