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Tumblr is Built for Ethnographic Research

Tue, Mar 25 2014 at 1:49 AM

Tumblr is an amazing platform for ethnography, and here's why...

I chose Tumblr as my medium for brand building for a variety of reasons, one of the most important being that there is a pre-established fitness community within tumblr that hosts several subsets of the tactile world of fitness. I did not even realize that there are build-in features that make the site extremely conducive to research, especially research on the development of a personal brand.

Tumblr tracks user activity, from most liked posts to days with biggest follower traffic. This specific tracking makes locating areas of progress (as well as timing of progress) extremely simple. I know who likes my content, when they like it, and I can even infer how a certain level of traffic solicits more attention.

Bottom line: tumblr is more than what it seems. The research potential is vast.

 

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 DISCUSSION
#1 POSTED BY Matthew Graham Silver, 04/01 8:29 PM

Specifically what parameters are measured, if you can clarify? Are there studies that would be better suited to tumblr, like Psychology vs. Sociology or Biology vs. Physics? Who has been viewing your blog, have you gotten feed back that has changed your perspective of this identity? If so, can you explain?

#2 POSTED BY guest guest, 04/01 8:31 PM

I'm curious about why you think tumblr might have put those tracking tools in place. Do you think it's explicitly for helping people to market themselves better, or might there be other reasons? Also, I'd be really interested to hear about which posts are attracting the most attention. Have you noticed any trends?

 

-IDtN

#3 POSTED BY Kyle Braden Nicholas, 04/01 8:33 PM

I'm not sure if you have use Tumblr before this class, but you are lucky in the time you've decided to use it.  The features that you have pointed out are new updates that came about not even a year ago.  I remember there being interesting feedback from established users that they weren't sure the usefulness of the Activity bar.  For many user, myself included, it isn't a super important feature, but for your research it would be great.  

You may want to look into other software that is available that reveals more information about the visitors of your Tumblr.  I am not sure were to find them, but I've seen on blogs that with this software the creators can see where the visitors are from in the world, and I believe a friend of mine who uses these features says that it can show you what site the person came from and what link they exited.  This may be useful for you as well in collecting data.

#4 POSTED BY Ryan Blaire Kahn, 04/02 3:05 PM

Thank you so much for your commentary, everyone! Matt and IDtN, I will be happy to clarify what my follower trends have looked like and what the application that allows me to track my progress looks like as well. I wish there was a way to show you all my actual activity page that I can see when I log into my tumblr..,maybe when we are talking about a relevant subject in class I can pull it up on the projector. 

Kyle, I would be thrilled to learn more about that software, if you have anymore info. I will look into it myself as well. It would be fantastic for research. Thank you!

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