Around the Net

Media Companies Try Getting Social With Tumblr

The New York Times, Monday, August 2, 2010 10:38 PM

Mark Coatney, a former senior editor at Newsweek, is the latest hire at Tumblr, a fast-growing blogging service based in New York that says it has 6.6 million users. He quickly cultivated a following on Tumblr for his thought-provoking, quick-witted Newsweek posts. Over the last few months, other media outlets have caught wind of Tumblr, which is free to use. The newest recruits include The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, The Paris Review, The Huffington Post, Life magazine, The New York Times and NPR.

But many of those outlets have done little more than set up a placeholder page. In his new job as a "media evangelist," Mr. Coatney's role, and in some ways his challenge, is to help them figure out what to do next. Coatney describes Tumblr as "a space in between Twitter and Facebook." The site allows users to upload images, videos, audio clips and quotes to their pages, in addition to bursts of text. It also targets a younger crowd which could be of great interest to traditional media.

Read the whole story at The New York Times »

blogging, media, social networks

Next story loading