Only caught onto this now, after reading some of 37Signals’ unique thoughts on the matter. Interesting idea nonetheless… In their own words:

“…the privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network…”

Do we need another social networking platform? Maybe not.

Can they beat Facebook? Probably not.

But with $170k in funds already, they have to at least try do *something* that is at least semi-significant, so I’m keen to see how this plays out.

I’ve been enjoying my tumbling content on here ever since I switched to this design (which is built on a standalone install of WordPress) late last year. To be honest though, considering that I was situated alone on my own island, my tumblog content was never gonna have the same traction as it would have in a community like Tumblr.

So I’ve been considering switching this design over to Tumblr and then just keeping my longer written articles on here (eg. all of my Project 52 contributions) and in the past week I actually ported this design over to Tumblr (the design is too awesome to lose imo). But if you’re reading this, then you’re still reading it on WordPress and not Tumblr…

Before I get into the reasons for not switching to Tumblr, I’d just like to tell you why I was even considering switching:

• There’s a community on Tumblr, which makes the sharing & distribution of one’s content much, much easier. The re-blog functionality is especially awesome and it is also something that I can’t replicate on a standalone version of WordPress.
• Even though I’ve replicated most of Tumblr’s posting functionality in my WordPress environment (something that we’ll also be implementing at WooThemes soon), it is still not as easy and quick to update my tumblog as it would be on Tumblr.

So why didn’t I switch then? Basically I found that I was being limited in terms of porting this design over in its current state. Tumblr has some awesome template tags, but they’re not as flexible as WordPress is, which is a shame. For most people considering Tumblr though, this wouldn’t be an issue, because they could design around those apparent limitations. For me, it has meant that I will continue to tumble on my lonely island over here.