Skip to main content

How to use Tumblr as a Google Reader shared items substitute

The social sharing world has seemed bleak for those of us who found the shared items in Google Reader to be the single best place to read and discuss the news. But I've found a little light lately in turning to Tumblr as a way to share links and pictures and allow discussion on said articles.

It's easy to set up. Get a Tumblr in shape and then:
  1. Add Tumblr to the Send To button (Reader Settings > Send To). This will take the place of the "Share with note" functionality.
  2. Go get the "Share on Tumblr" bookmarklet at the Tumblr Goodies page. This will let you share any article you find. 
  3. To get the commenting experience, sign up for Disqus, create a new site and then enter the shortcode into your Tumblr.
Those things will let you share to Tumblr as easily as you did to Reader. 

Of course, Tumblr still pales in comparison to Reader, if only because Reader allowed you to have all shared articles AND comments in the same place where you were reading your usual articles. And one of the great things about Reader is that you were usually able to read the entire article without having to leave Reader. But it still scratches that sharing itch, and adds in features that you couldn't get in Reader shared items, like Analytics and the ability to connect external services like Instagram.

As a side note, I've been liking Tumblr a lot, but there's still room for improvement. A better dashboard is sorely needed, the text editor needs a larger window space, and although the templates are among the best of the free blogging platforms, a lot of them are unpredictable and buggy. But I've been liking the ease of posting and ability to customize template enough so that I've started considering moving this blog to Tumblr.

UPDATED to put in the part about adding in your Disqus to allow commenting. An essential part!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why you should be clicking the Google +1 button

One of the things that most makes me feel like I'm beating my head against a wall is when I'm trying to convince people to click reaction buttons like the Facebook Like button or Google +1 button on web pages. I think that most people just don't really think to do it when they read something that they like, but they should, because as Avinash Kaushik brilliantly termed it , it's applause.  Now, I kind of get why people shy away from the using the Facebook Like button: because it shows up on your Wall, has a chance to show up in people's stream and now shows up in the ticker. All of those things are great for people trying to promote their content and get more clicks, but it's not so great for those of us just trying to get feedback on what people are liking and if they're actually reading what we're writing. Even if you're not actively embarrassed to have people know that you like it, it just feels a little more intrusive than a lot of people wan...
Post a Comment
Read more

Some scattered thoughts on the money of digital music

If you haven't already read Digital Audio Insider's interview with Camper Van Beethoven's Jonathan Segal ¹, it's a must read for anyone with even a slight interest in digital music and the money of the industry. Segal has tons of thoughts on just about every aspect of digital music, but best of all, he brings in these thoughts as someone whose initial music industry experience was in the days of purely-physical media, when "pirating" meant copying something onto a blank tape. My main takeway is general and obvious but an important reminder: we are in a transition time for music, and what it will become is anyone's guess. I think Segal's take on merchandise and live performances taking the place as artist's primary source of income as "asinine" is too harsh to be true, but I do think that we're in such a state of transition that any shot at predicting artistic income in the future is completely in the dark. Such predictions are really ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why Google+'s Circles doesn't fix anything

One of the biggest advantages of social media-style communication is the ability for your audience to choose itself rather than for you to assume interests and choose the audience yourself, likely leaving out people that would be interested. Anyone who's started a blog knows the surprise in finding that the people who read it religiously are the people you never would have thought would be interested, while many of those people that you thought would read every word never look at it. Likewise with Facebook, where many of the people I interact with are old friends from the past who have turned out to be surprisingly funny and interesting, whereas closer friends are never to be heard from. The flip side of this is email, where every "To" box requires you to decide who your audience is. That's all fine and well when you just need to get through to one person, but when sending information to larger groups, how do you know you're not leaving out the people who...
6 comments
Read more