Now that Yahoo! has nabbed Tumblr in a $1.1 billion deal, users are wondering what will become of their Tumblogs. As a preemptive strike, many are even leaving the service, looking for a new home for their food photos, cat pics, art portfolios and random online ephemera.
It’s a lot to mull over. Tumblr’s responsible for as many as 50.9 billion posts. That’s great news for website builders and social networking services hoping to get a stronger foothold in the blogging/microblogging/sharing categories. And there’s no shortage of those that can fill the gap these days.
Here’s a look at just a few of the many alternatives for Tumblr defectors.
1. WordPress
Of course, WordPress is one of the top go-to sites for Tumblr defectors — it has reportedly taken in as many 72,000 of them in a single hour when Yahoo prepped its Tumblr buy-out announcement. What’s good for users is that there are an incredible number of themes available for WordPress blogs and a vast array of plug-ins for posting, social sharing, metrics and much, much more. That allows users to go as fundamental or deep as they want. The bad news? If you want a custom domain, that will cost you.
2. Posthaven
Speaking of fees, if you’re willing to shell out $5 per month, you can have up to 10 sites, thanks to Posterous co-founders Garry Tan and Brett Gibson. Seems like experience taught them something: Posterous may be no more, thanks to Twitter shutting it down this spring, but the owners pledge that this offering will never, ever be closed or acquired. That means you’re paying for a blog URL that will never die. And although Posthaven is a work in progress, the duo promises that many of the things people loved about Posterous will be on tap at Posthaven. Some are already present like autopost, and others, including post by email, will be added as time goes on. But sorry — there’s no free version of this.
3. Jux
New York–based Jux is young and pretty, and notably, it contains no ads or sidebars. The free platform categorizes posts by content type such as images, video, text and more, and it features a slick, design-forward aesthetic that uses a fullscreen, edge-to-edge format that works beautifully on iOS devices (with more on the way, it promises). It doesn’t have quite the same community feeling as Tumblr, nor does it have an easy way to post when you’re not at your computer, but when you are, your shared images and content will look gorgeous.
4. Soup.io
Soup.io’s claim to fame is simplicity. These free sites may not be sexy, but they do offer a no-nonsense, incredibly unfussy way of posting, re-posting and creating content and “life streaming” it all in a basic blog format. That’s a huge plus for beginners and other not-so-tech savvy users, or anyone who doesn’t want to fiddle with the back-end a lot just to share some food pics or their latest artworks.
5. The Up-And-Comers
Seems like everyday, there’s a new competitor gunning for your attention. It’s riskier to bet on an unproven platform, but if you like the idea of getting in on the next big thing early, then you won’t want for options like Medium, invite-only SVBTLE and Kickstarter hopeful Ghost.
And don’t forget, there are plenty of WYSIWYG website builders, like Squarespace, Weebly and Wix. Some folks also use “If This, Then That” to make sure the latest shareables are pushed out across all of a user’s social networks and services. Some of the mainstay competitors may be worth revisiting now as well. Google’s Blogger was updated to work with Google Plus, and photo-forward users may want to downscale and rely on services like Flickr exclusively (which also owned by Yahoo). There are even third-party tools — like Flickrock or Pullfolio — that beautify those Flickr-powered portfolios. [Update: Flickr just got some huge updates, with a brand new interface, a new Android app and a mammoth 1 TB of storage.] And that’s just scratching the surface. There are many, many other alternatives, whether you’re a beginner or an advanced user looking for a richer featureset.
Are you on Tumblr now? Tell us if you’re sticking with the service for the time being or taking your Tumblog elsewhere. And if so, let us know where in the comments.
