Most of this ReBlogged post is removed because this is a tangent of that. You can read of its origin on dalas verdugo’s site here. It ends with this:
“I did the same thing on Tumblr when I was close to missing a flight from NYC. Except I was able to include photos. Again, I don’t understand the point of Twitter.”
So, dalas. If you’ll allow me to bastardize Marshall McLuhan’s concepts with my own rudimentary understanding of them, I’ll try and apply the terms ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ used in McLuhan’s template to represent the differences between film and television to similarly define the differences between tumblr and Twitter.
tumblr, as a medium, requires active engagement on the part of the reader. He or she becomes immersed in the central forum of the tumblr Dashboard and actively refreshes at desired increments, scrolls through the latest content, digs deeper into individual posts by enlarging images, following links, playing videos, and even repurposing the Dashboard’s content for his or her own editorial use. tumblr is mostly hot, with occasional shifts into coolness (while skimming, one searches for the next emotional engagement).
Twitter, as a medium, requires nearly no active engagement. It is purely text-based with limited use of linking to outside content or other users within the Twitter forum, it refreshes automatically (with the aid of a desktop-based app), limits itself to palatable bits of easily-ingested vignettes, any of which can easily be missed while still providing the reader with a sense of community and contact with the zeitgeist. Twitter is mostly cool, with occasional bits of hotness (while scanning, the odd tweet may provoke a public or private response at the most, or the marking as “favorite” at the least).
Each has its place. Neither replaces the other.
This whole thing presupposes that you use tumblr and Twitter the way I use them, and I think, dalas, that you find yourself regularly immersed in the tumblr Dashboard. Could it be that Twitter simply doesn’t offer you the immersive experience you crave?
