Flattr is a micropayments website that allows users to purchase tokens which they can then use to pay bloggers small amounts of money by clicking on the Flattr button found on various websites (pictured above).

The site is encouraging users to use the Flatt Click Button or even buy your favorite blogger an ebook, their favorite songs or even a t-shirt.

Speaking about the movement Flattr co-founder Linus Olsson told Mashable:

“We think that many blogs are insightful and witty and people just expect them to be free even though there are a lot of effort and love put into them,” and “It’s about time to try to give them something tangible back, at least one day of the year.”

While the day is obviously a great marketing ploy by the micropayments website it’s also an easy way to pay fractions on the dollar to your favorite writers. For example a simple $5 payment is disbursed throughout the month based on your clicks, for example if you have $5 in your account but only click on one Flattr button that writer will receive 100% of the disbursement, however if you click on 10 buttons that money at the end of the month is distributed among all of your clicks.

Helping spread the word about today’s events are Posterous, Bambuser and Twingly.

As one blogger says on the Flattr site:

“This month … I’ve made $0.03, but it was the best $0.03 I ever made.”

It’s easy to forget that many bloggers put in long hours (I can log 18 hours on many days), it’s not quite the “work eight hours a week” pipe dream fed to readers by “make money blogging” website owners.

So take some time today and support your favorite blogger, heck even a beer or a cup of hot chocolate on a cold day can make a writers week, maybe even their month.

After partnering with SoundCloud in order to broaden Tumblr’s appeal to music lovers, the micro blogging service is now including a small (but useful) feature that will appeal to hard core photo bloggers.

The Dashboard now lets you view the Camera Model, ISO, Aperture, Exposure, and Focal Length of any photo uploaded with Exif data. (Tumblr Staff)

Although the inclusion of EXIF data will not appeal to the average user, it’s inclusion will excite professional photographers who are (not surprisingly) obsessed with the “hidden” data behind each and every photo.

The inclusion of EXIF may also help Tumblr attract more photo bloggers, as well as give them another reason to use their service over social networks like Instagram, and Twitter (the latter who is jumping into the photo sharing wars).

The feature is only available to Tumblr layouts supporting EXIF tags, which theme developers need to include if they want the camera information to be shown (note: you can also add it as well if you are comfortable with HTML).

For those of you who are photo bloggers, what are your thoughts regarding the inclusion of EXIF?

Would this convince you to use Tumblr as your main photo sharing service or would you consider sticking with services like Flickr instead?

As of this post over 20.8 million blogs are hosted by Tumblr, compared to about 20.76 million blogs hosted by WordPress.com (the latter who is also witnessing tremendous growth online).

According to Quantcast, Tumblr is now a top 30 site, as the micro blogging service has dethroned GoDaddy.com for the 29th spot out of the top million sites in the US (note: WordPress.com comfortably occupies the 18th slot).

Although Tumblr receives far more page views than WordPress.com, according to Quantcast the latter apparently boasts far more unique visitors than Tumblr (which could be due to the fact that WP.com is a lot more SEO friendly than rivals).

Despite becoming a mainstream platform used by business, professional bloggers and even a government agency, Tumblr has thus far declined to embrace basic importing tools (allowing users to easily move content from a rival platform upon Tumblr’s servers).

For those of you who use Tumblr to power their sites (or at least compliment their existing blogs), why do you think so many people are blogging upon Tumblr now?

Also do you think Tumblr will eventually surpass Google’s Blogger as the most popular blogging platform by the end of the year?

Or at least that was their intention as apparently users are voicing their complaints upon Tumblr as well as Twitter regarding the change.

While yours truly loves the new interface (as it makes it easier to switch between different blogs), many users are upset that the new default dashboard does not display how many followers one has as well as hiding the messages inbox (among other things).

Note: You can see follower counts, as well as most of the information from the previous dashboard by selecting the specific blog’s dashboard.

Although Tumblr’s change seems suited to making the service even easier to use, they also seems to be promoting their Explore feature by placing it in a prominent spot upon the sidebar (a strategy that seems to geared to helping new comers find new blogs to follow).

For those of you who are fans of Tumblr, what are your thoughts regarding the latest changes? Also, what would you add to the current dashboard on Tumblr if you could?

It’s been only 15 days Tumblr sprinted past 19 million blogs, and now the micro blogging service is now hosting over 20 million blogs upon their servers.

Tumblr’s latest feat puts the service within striking distance of WordPress.com, who recently passed the 20 million blog milestone last month.

According to Quantcast, Tumblr has recently jumped up a spot to 33 (previously they were ranked 34 out of the top million sites), which puts Tumblr between WalMart and Reference.com (who hold the 32nd and 34th top spots, respectively).

Tumblr has received a lot of media attention, as the service (or rather the community) was credited with helping a man retrieve his stolen MacBook as well as partnering with SoundCloud (a popular service amongst music fans).

While the micro blogging service isn’t as advanced as rivals like WordPress and Blogger, Tumblr seems to have found a way to not only appeal to teenagers, but also businesses, media companies and (surprisingly) a government agency.

For those of you who use the service to compliment their blog (or even replace it as their main site), why do you think Tumblr is growing so fast despite fierce competition from rivals?

[W]e’re so excited to finally announce that we’ve hooked up with SoundCloud to bring their network of sound (music, podcasts, standup, journalism, and pretty much anything audible) to Tumblr.

Not only can you cut-and-paste any SoundCloud track URL into your Audio posts, now you can search SoundCloud from the comfort of Tumblr! (Tumblr Staff Blog)

As a bonus, users can easily embed not only the audio file, but also display an album cover alongside their musical post.

Tumblr fans can even post songs to their blog via mobile by using the official SoundCloud app (note: iPhone and Android only), or from SoundCloud itself via the Tumblr share button.

While SoundCloud does boast an impressive archive of musical files, many of the songs indexed are either remixes or live concert versions (as the professional versions are not available for obvious reasons).

Tumblr fans can check out the latest features by visiting the upload audio page, and for those of you who enjoy music as well as blogging, what are your thoughts regarding Tumblr’s latest feature?

Also, should other blogging platforms like WordPress, Blogger, etc., follow Tumblr’s lead and create something similar upon their respective platforms?

When you enable password protection, only those people that you supply the username and password to will be able to view your blog. Everyone else will get a prompt to enter the username and password and, if they don’t know it, won’t be able to view the blog.

You can choose to password protect only specific blogs and Photo Albums or you can password protect your entire account. (Everything Typepad)

While it’s great to see Typepad join the ranks of their rivals, users unfortunately have to choose between password protecting their entire blog or having every entry viewable to the public.

Hopefully Typepad will consider allowing users to create password protected posts (an option available to WP.com and self hosted WordPress fans) while allowing the rest of their entries to remain public.

For those of you who use Typepad, what other features would you like to see unveiled upon the number one premium blogging service?

Also (for curiosities sake), why do you choose Typepad over free and freemium services like Tumblr and WordPress.com, respectively?

After three months of the beta testing, the official release of the Movable Type 5.1 is now ready to download. Movable Type 4.36 and 5.05 are also released as mandatory security updates. These updates resolve multiple vulnerabilities discovered in Movable Type 5.x and Movable Type 4.x. [...]

A remote attacker could execute arbitrary code in a logged-in users’ web browser. A remote attacker could read or modify the contents in the system under certain circumstances. (Official Movable Type Blog)

Along with security patches, the latest updates bring a few other perks for Movable Type fans such as drag and drop categories, improved listing screens as well as a few enhancements for multi-blogging sites.

The latest version of Movable Type is also fully compatible with the latest versions of Safari and Firefox, although Google Chrome seems to be left out in the cold.

Note: Movable Type is not officially supporting Google Chrome, although according to them it should “work” since it’s a webkit browser just like Safari.

Although Movable Type isn’t as popular as it use to be years ago, their software is still used to power a few prominent blogs online due to the software’s ability to handle high volumes of traffic without crashing (within reason of course).

Is your site powered by Movable Type? If so, what are your thoughts regarding the update and why would you recommend it over rival platforms?

We’re always amazed by the breadth and creativity we find on Tumblr, and we’re always looking for better ways for you to showcase your talents and other interesting blogs. With the new Spotlight, we’ve set aside a special place to highlight a few of these blogs that truly inspire us. (Tumblr Staff Blog)

Tumblr is in the process of adding more categories (which users strongly voiced in the reblog section), as well as expanding Spotlight to cater to users beyond the English language.

Along with their Explore page, this should help newcomers of the micro blogging service to easily find new sites to follow, helping to the site to maintain its high retention rate (which was 85% in 2009 before the service went mainstream).

Unlike Twitter’s Suggested Users section however, Tumblr’s Spotlight is not available within their native iPhone, Blackberry and Android apps (which is sad as it would make it easier to locate interesting tumblogs).

Speaking of Android, Tumblr’s co-founder David Karp had a few interesting things to say about Google’s mobile OS when he appeared on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt next to Instagram’s Kevin Systrom.

Just before exiting the stage and after Systrom answered the Android question Karp was quick to add that Android “Absolutely Sucks To Develop For” (The Droid Guy)

Karp did not elaborate as why he loathed developing for Android, although it may explain why Tumblr for iPhone has usually received more attention (at least feature wise) than its Android sibling.

For those of you who love Tumblr, what extra features do you want included within Spotlight? Also, do you think Karp’s comments about Android are valid?

i wrote a little iPhone App and an TXP-Plugin that allows you to upload images from your iPhone directly into yourTXP-Site.

You can shot a new foto or choose one from your phone.
I included from image tab: Image name, alt text, caption, category, caption, thumb with and height. (Offiicial Textpattern Forum)

The app is being created by Bastian Sackermann and unlike the webOS Textpattern app, the iOS version will be free for the masses.

Due to a specific limitation within the Textpattern CMS/blog platform, users will have to also install a free plugin in order to upload images to their blog (note: there is no word about video uploading yet).

While the plugin itself will be released under GPL, the unofficial Textpattern iPhone app will be closed source as Sackermann had to utilize some code from the company he works for (which his bossed approved as long as it wasn’t GPL).

Hopefully Sackermann can release the app under the Apache 2.0 license, which would allow more users to contribute to the code while protecting his boss’s intellectual property (as having the app become a one man shop is not a good idea).

The app currently is in beta testing mode right now, and for those of you who power their blogs via Textpattern, what features would you want included within the app?

To put things into perspective, it took Tumblr about 2 months to grow from 15 million blogs to 18 million (which is about 1.5 million additional blogs per month), although now it seems like the site is on track to add over 2 million sites per month!

Tumblr also seems to be branching out beyond the “tween girl” demographics, with Quantcast reporting that there are more guys using the service than girls.

With more businesses, government agencies, and celebrities using the service, it may only be a matter of time before Tumblr surpasses not only WordPress.com (who just passed 20 million sites), but challenges Blogger for the gold.

For those of you who use Tumblr (or have used it), why do you think the service is growing faster than rival platforms? Also do you think Tumblr could dethrone Blogger as the number one blogging platform in the world?

Hat Tip: Technorati for the demographics info.

While BlogSpot blogs are still online, users logging into Blogger are greeted with this screen below:

Google is in the process of restoring posts and comments, although instead of fretting and cussing on Twitter (as that will only stress you out even more) here are a few things you can do until Google grants you access to your Blogger Blog.

Auto Post From Elsewhere

BlogSpot fans should consider using platforms like Posterous which can automatically post your content to Blogger once the service becomes available.

Although Posterous lacks some of the bells and whistles of Blogger, it can temporarily satisfy your blog itch as well as send posts to your blog once Google restores access.

Note: It also might be a good idea to start a backup blog upon another platform just in case Blogger encounters massive outage again in the future.

Backup Your Blog

Just because you can not access your blog doesn’t mean you can not back it up since BlogSpot sites are still visible online (despite the temporary lock out).

Although there are plenty of inexpensive backup services for Blogger, you should consider using services like Blogbackupr which will daily backup your BlogSpot blog for free.

Note: You can also use services like Google Reader or an RSS feed reader to “back up” your blog, although it’s always best to go with a tool designed to save your site.

Relax, The World Isn’t Ending

Truth be told whether you use a service platform or self host your blog, chances are your blog will experience downtime (whether those are triggered by maintenance failures or DDoS attacks).

Instead of stressing out, you should use this time as a chance to write out future posts (upon Word or Google Docs) or simply go outside and enjoy the sunshine.

Once Blogger comes back up, you’ll have plenty of time to catch up and inform the world about your latest discovery or vent about whatever is vexing your soul.

Any Other Advice?

For those of you affected by the Blogger downtime, what other advice would you give to fellow BlogSpot fans who are unable to access their blogs?

Image Credit: Avrenim Acceber

While the company did reveal that Squarespace’s new features that will “power tomorrow’s web,” their CEO did hint V6 will embrace the Tumblog craze (which has already infected Typepad, LiveJournal and WordPress.com).

Will you be embracing the content aware styling approach to blog posts used by Tumblr in this release?

Yes. And extending it. (Anthony Casalena via Squarespace Blog)

Note: Emphasis theirs.

It’s unclear what Casalena means by extending Tumblr’s famous formatting features, although he could be hinting that Squarespace will support extra post formats like polls and quiz’s (features currently lacking upon Tumblr).

True to Squarespace’s style the company is not providing an ETA for when V6 will be released (as they are in the process of perfecting the new version), although a few lucky users will be able to help them beta test V6 over the next few months.

For those of you who are passionate about Squarespace, does the idea of a Tumblog appeal to you?

Also if you have a Tumblr blog, would you consider migrating upon Squarespace once V6 rolls out? (note: does Squarespace even support Tumblr importing?)

Taking a cue from Facebook and Twitter, Tumblr recently launched their official share button to the world, which may appeal to bloggers who prefer not to partake of the Tumblr frenzy.

The Tumblr Button can give you complete control over how your content appears when shared on Tumblr. Not only does this mean specifying an excerpt or summary, but also deciding whether it appears as a Link, Quote, Photo, or Video Embed.

Even better: This can be deeply integrated with just about any publishing platform to add contextual buttons next to things like paragraphs or photos. (Tumblr Staff Blog)

The ability for Tumblr’s to control how they share content upon their sites is huge, especially when dealing with the limited sharing options presented by Twitter or even Facebook (the latter which at least provides thumbnails).

While the button might be a huge win for the micro blogging site as well as the Tumblr tribe, bloggers upon other platforms should consider adding the button for the following reasons.

Traffic And Subscribers

Whether you love the micro blogging site or have “mixed feelings” about the service, tapping into Tumblr’s growing popularity could help boost traffic towards your site as well as bring in new readers.

In fact a few sites that have added Tumblr’s button have noticed an increase of traffic from Tumblr (which is a good sign for any blogger depending upon page views in order to help pay the bills).

As a bonus, the opinions of Tumblr’s who reblog your content are much more accessible than other services as they are not limited to 140 characters (like Twitter), and can be publicly viewed from the outside (unlike Facebook).

Citation And SEO

Tumblr’s contextual button next to paragraphs is ingenious as it allows Tumblr readers to quote their favorite sections that will appeal to their respective audiences online.

Even better is the fact that Tumblr provides a link back to your blog, helping you to receive some extra Google juice while at the same time boosting your SEO.

Note: Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any analytics option to displayed how many times your content was reblogged, although hopefully Tumblr will remedy that in the not too distant future.

One Less Tumblog

Last but not least inserting the Tumblr button may eliminate the need for you to launch a companion Tumblr site for your blog.

This not only simplifies blog management (as it’s much easier to focus on one blog than multiple sites), but helps you maintain focus on creating content rather than sharing it upon another platform.

Note: Although I do recommend users create a professional Tumblr blog (as it will help immerse you within the world of Tumblr), the micro blogging site may not appeal to everyone, especially if you’re not fond of reblogging.

Where Can I Install It?

Self Hosted WordPress fans can install the Tumblr Button for WordPress plugin, while BlogSpot, OnSugar and Posterous addicts will need to dive into the HTML of their skins to insert the button.

Have you installed the Share on Tumblr button upon your blog? If so, what features would you want Tumblr to add?

Before @mentions, commenting threads were an island. There wasn’t a way to reach out to people who weren’t already participating. Now with @mentions, you can call out your friends or friendly social media gurus, and get them involved in the conversation.

To begin using @mentions, just type the @ symbol and then continue typing the name of the person you’d like to mention. As you type you will see a drop down list of suggested users to choose from. The drop down is smart; it will update with increasingly accurate suggestions the further you type. (Official Disqus Blog)

This is a smart move by Disqus, as it gives bloggers a reason to choose them over rivals like Facebook comments (the latter who has been unable to secure a partnership with Twitter).

What would make this feature even better is if Disqus could somehow partner with the folks at Tumblr to roll out something similar (perhaps by alerting authors via the message board?) for the micro blogs 18 million plus fans.

While its doubtful Disqus would be able to integrate @Mentions for Facebook users (for obvious reasions), Disqus could try to reach out to other social networks or even various chat platforms like Skype or AIM.

The only drawback to @Mentions is that it can also be used by trolls to harass people in various “shout outs” to their posts, although hopefully Disqus comes up with a quick way to silence @Mentions from users who feel they’re being harassed.

Do you use Disqus? If so, what do you think about the companies latest feature? Also, what social networks or blogging sites would you want Disqus to include within @Mentions?

The Disqus network of communities reaches nearly 500 million unique visitors every month. This is across the 750,000 websites using Disqus, with about 35 million users participating on these communities. [...]

According to a recent study by Lijit, Disqus is used by 75% of websites who use a third party commenting or discussion system. (Official Disqus Blog)

Note: Emphasis theirs.

It’s no coincidence that Disqus is currently winning the third party commenting wars as the startup makes installing Disqus as simple as possible upon popular platforms like Blogger and Tumblr (via widgets and short codes, respectively).

Rival services (especially Facebook comments) usually require much more tinkering with the code, which can make installing them more intimidating for users unfamiliar with HTML .

Disqus currently supports every major blogging platform and service available save WordPress.com (the latter who only allows IntenseDebate which is similar to Disqus).

For those of you who have installed Disqus, what features do you enjoy the most about the service? Also what features would you add that you find are currently missing?

For comparison’s sake WordPress.com (the most popular blogging service after Google’s Blogger) passed the 18 million mark in March, and currently boasts 19.7 million blogs as of this post.

According to Quantcast, Tumblr’s ranking is officially at 34 (out of the top 1 million sites), having climbed up 6 spots in just two weeks!

Despite Tumblr’s limitations (i.e. one image, video or audio per post) people, businesses and even government agencies are flocking towards the platform who seems to have perfected the “art of blogging” (or at the very least micro blogging).

Although several notable platforms have mimicked Tumblr’s post format features over the years, very few blogging services (if any) have witnessed Tumblr’s incredible growth.

For those of you who use Tumblr to power their personal or professional sites (or who have at the very least tried out Tumblr), why do you think users are flocking upon the micro blogging service?

Get the official LiveJournal app and access LiveJournal wherever you roam. LiveJournal is a vibrant, social journaling platform that allows users around the world to find each other based on common passions and pursuits. Users share thoughts, experiences, guidance, artwork, fiction, and more by posting to journals and interest-based communities. (Official Android Market)

The Android app seems to be very similar to its iPhone sibling, as both allow users to upload images, create polls and edit previous entries. LiveJournal also seems to have mimicked their iOS app’s elegant layout upon Android (which is a rarity upon Google’s mobile OS).

Unfortunately the Android app lacks the ability to upload videos directly to ones LiveJournal blog (just like its iOS sibling), although hopefully they will consider adding this feature in the not so distant future.

LiveJournal has yet to announce their Android app upon their official blog (or even reference it upon their mobile page), although users can download the app from Google’s official Android Market.

In November of 2009, Tumblr stumbled past the top 100 sites and approximately 8 months later they broke through the top 50 sites (and as a bonus stealing the bronze away from Typepad).

Although Tumblr’s unique visitors pale in comparison to rivals like WordPress.com and Blogger, respectively, Tumblr’s users seem far more engaged on the site when one looks at their page views (note: since Blogger isn’t quantified, Quantcast can only estimate their size).

Currently Tumblr hosts over17.2 million blogs, which is incredible considering that the service only boasted 15 million sites in March (which is about 2 million additional blogs in less than 40 days).

With the micro blogging site showing no signs of slowing down, it will be interesting to see if Tumblr is able to catch up WP.com, the latter who currently hosts about 19.4 million blogs (up from 18 million last March).

Although the team behind Melody boasts about the platform’s stability and security (which everyone usually says about their preferred CMS), the blog software might have one advantage when compared against rivals.

One area of the product we have paid special attention to is in theme creation and management. And as some indication that we are on the right track, Melody’s new theming framework has already led to creation of a number of new themes for the platform. Designers for the platform have all noted how much easier it is to build a web site, even when compared to other platforms. They like the fact that they are not required to know or understand the complex syntax of a programming language; they appreciate that they don’t need to learn Perl or PHP[.] (Official Melody Blog)

The ability to easily create themes could be Melody’s ticket towards survival in an already crowded market, enabling theme designers from Blogger, WordPress and Tumblr to easily port their creations without relearning new code.

Unfortunately most of the new Melody themes are hosted upon Github, although hopefully the team takes a cue from WordPress by offering live previews of themes instead (as Github may not appeal to the general non-geek population).

Curious readers can download Melody as well as test out the software upon their own servers, and for those of you who have tried the platform, would you consider leaving Movable Type (or WordPress) for Melody? Why or why not?

For a number of technical and operational reasons, we’ve decided to finally end our support for all legacy accounts and blogs after June 25th, 2011. So if you have a Blogger account and haven’t logged in since 2007, you will lose access to the account and associated content permanently unless you update to the Google Account system before June 25th. (Blogger Buzz)

Unless someone is totally paranoid about Google Accounts, it’s puzzling why anyone would not upgrade (especially with Blogger offering features like Layout Views and Theme Creator).

Google hasn’t indicated whether they will also delete BlogSpot blogs refusing to upgrade, although I would not be surprised if Google did take them down eventually (especially those that have remained inactive for a period of time).

For those of you still using the archaic login system, you can avoid losing access to your blog by clicking upon the legacy claimer which will associate your BlogSpot blog with a Google account.

Note: For those of you who migrated away from Blogger to another platform, you might want to claim your content (especially if you have links pointing back to yourblog.blogspot.com on your site).

After watching rivals platforms receive official apps upon various smartphones, fans of Textpattern (which is a blog/CMS software similar to WordPress) have been demanding an app to use while on the go. [edit]

Now it appears a company has created an app for the Textpattern tribe, although fans might be disappointed over which platform was chosen.

Mobile Textpattern is your Textpattern client app. Create new articles, edit existing ones and store them on your device as draft. Ideal if you want to save your ideas for new articles or extend existing articles with more informations. (Mobile Textpattern for webOS)

Although webOS isn’t as popular as iOS or Android, the mobile platform has been neglected by most blog platforms (although that might change once WordPress releases their webOS app).

Mobile Textpattern is priced at $0.99 and seems to be limited to basic blog functions only (i.e. create and edit posts), with no mention of additional features such as uploading videos as well as images.

Hopefully Mobile Textpattern’s entrance will inspire developers to create third party apps upon other platforms in the near future, although for now webOS fans can acquire a taste of mobile blogging without logging in from their Palm Pre’s.

After receiving criticism over their commenting system, Facebook has refreshed their commenting system in a bid to appeal to bloggers resistant to outsourcing their communities.

Aside from adding permalinks (via the timestamps) and making comments SEO friendly, Facebook is also launching one feature that may appeal to bloggers.

We are introducing a modified Comments Box News Feed story to feature more social context. Simply include the og:image, og:title, og:url, og:description, and og:site_name in the Open Graph meta tags on your site to generate the following larger story:

Optimizing the News Feed story increases the click-through-rate (CTR) back to your site and encourages people on Facebook to contribute to the discussion. To verify the image, title, and description Open Graph meta tags, visit the URL Linter. (Facebook Developers Blog)

As an additional bonus, Facebook is now allows bloggers to export their comment via the Facebook Graph API, which should help ease fears of having blog communities “locked in” without an exit strategy.

With Facebook comments boasting  social analytics and troll unfriendly technology, we may see even more bloggers and web domains outsource their communities to Facebook now that they have addressed most (if not all) of the objections.

Self hosting WordPress fans can install Facebook comments via a plugin while BlogSpot fans will need to dive into the code (or ask a geek to implement if for you).

For those of you who allow users to comment upon your sites, will you now consider outsourcing your comment section to Facebook? If not, why?

However if you notice the stats between the platforms, you’ll realize that while Blogger and WordPress.com are growing at a healthy clip (especially WP.com who just passed 19 million blogs), Tumblr is growing much faster than its rivals.

Boasting approximately 16.5 million blogs (up from 15 million about a month ago), Tumblr is obviously doing something right, which might explain why every major blog service except Blogger.com has copied them.

Although Tumblr’s keep it simple approach might explain the site’s popularity (as Joshua Strebel of Page.ly fame explains upon WP Candy), there might be several other reasons why Tumblr is growing faster than their rivals.

Third Party App Connections

When I’m referring to apps, I’m not talking about third party blogging apps (most which connect to WordPress, Tumblr and Blogger).

Rather there are numerous third party apps that have nothing to do with blogging (like Instagram, Instapaper, and those zillion quotation apps) that allow one to easily share content upon Tumblr.

Although there are probably apps that allow one to easily share content upon WordPress and Blogger, they are not given the Tumblr’s prominence (who is usually displayed as a third option behind Facebook and Twitter).

Inexpensive Themes Please

It’s no accident that theme designers are making thousands per month on Tumblr, especially when they are rolling out quality templates that match (if not surpass) those seen upon WordPress and Blogger.

As a bonus, premium themes upon Tumblr are surprisingly cheaper than those upon WordPress.com, with prices ranging from $9 to $49 (compared to the average $50 plus price for a solid WP.com theme).

While most Tumblr themes are free (which is true for WP.com and Blogger), the cheaper prices seems to be motivating users to buy more themes upon Tumblr’s centralized market.

Majoring In The Mobile

Tumblr is one of the few companies that I know who consistently provides an elegant design across all of their smartphone apps.

It doesn’t matter if one has a Blackberry, iPhone or Android device, users upon all 3 have access to the same features (at least for the most part).

Another bonus is that Tumblr users (at least on the iOS app) have more control over their post which including permalink structure as well as whether an article is sent to Twitter.

Last but not least Tumblr users can easily comment, like or reblog a post directly from their smartphone (giving readers more opportunities to connect with writers).

Why Do You Think Tumblr Is Popular?

While Tumblr’s simplicity is one of the major reasons for it’s popularity, their are probably more reasons why the platform continues to grow in spite of rivals mimicking their features.

For those of you who use Tumblr (or even switched upon it from another service), why do you think Tumblr is popular and why does the platform appeal to you?

“GSA negotiated the Tumblr terms of service, and we are the first federal agency using Tumblr,” said GSA spokesman Robert Lesino. [...]

“We chose Tumblr because it is a rapidly growing platform,” said Jessica Milcetich, USA.gov Blog manager. “It not only is for blogging, but it offers social features so people can share, comment and connect.” (Federal Computer Week)

It’s unclear what the GSA was using before (note: does anyone else know?), although they imported all of their posts upon Tumblr from their previous platform.

The agency is also using Disqus to power their comment section, and seems to enjoy writing lengthy posts (which isn’t exactly typical of the average Tumblr user).

While it’s not surprising to see the government adopt blog service platforms (after all, the “much loved” TSA uses Blogger), Tumblr’s embrace by the agency signals that the micro blogging service has gone mainstream (which should please their investors).