Last year the gods of reblogging, Tumblr, were bought by Yahoo for a mind-boggling $1.1 billion, leading to widespread consternation within the platform’s tight-knit community, and for many, a search for the way out. No longer a simple blogging site, Tumblr serves multiple purposes, from a free blog-hosting platform for creatives and artists to web-hosting for small e-commerce sites (strangely, k-pop merchandise has found its home on Tumblr). And yet, from behind the clouds of Tumblr (and its big sister, WordPress), smaller, newer, and more intriguing platforms have emerged.
5 Tumblr Alternatives That Will Make You Wish You Could Create New Blogs All The Time
WYSIWYG Free Web-Hosting Platforms
The preposterously long acronym WYSIWYG is actually web-speak for “what you see is what you get”, and refers to online editing platforms that allow you to see, in real-time, the website you’re creating – without the HTML code. While they don’t offer the same kind of social capabilities (like instant reblogging and liking) as Tumblr or other platforms, free web-hosting site-building platforms like IM Creator do offer an excellent free service for the kind of Tumblr user whose page more closely resembles a personal website than a reblogged feed.
Medium
Medium was started by Twitter founder Evan Williams, and users must sign in through their Twitter accounts to start blogging. Once an invite-only platform for the most tech-news savvy of hipsters, Medium is now open for all (with a Twitter account) to use. Rather than a website-like blog page, Medium is geared toward community sharing. Their interface is pretty and mobile-ready, making it a fairly addictive platform for getting your opinion out there.
Soup.io
On the other end of the tech-savvy spectrum lies Soup.io, an easy as pie blogging platform that likes to think of itself as hovering somewhere between a “profile” and a fully functioning “blog”. While not exactly the most beautiful interface on the internet, Soup is easy to use, especially for people new to concepts like “reblogging” and “lifestreaming”.
Ghost
Following an enormously successful Kickstarter campaign, Ghost launched in 2013 as yet another Tumblr alternative boasting fast, free, and intuitive blogging capabilities. While less attention is paid to design templates, Ghost does offer some nifty tricks, including a split screen viewer for writing and editing your blog, as well as an easy-to skim-through blog feed. Ghost also offers an advanced data analytics dashboard, so that you can pet your ego with beautifully presented live data.
Jux
Jux stands out from the crowd with a handy array of posting formats, like their “listicle” option. Quotes, pictures, and text stand out nicely on Jux, making for a pleasant reading experience. Their much-hyped “edge-to-edge” display makes images and text spread to the far reaches of the screen, giving users more space to be creative. Jux tends to look better on mobile devices than a desktop screen, with lots of touch options and big, crisp images. While fast and intuitive, Jux doesn’t offer the the breadth of design options that Tumblr or WordPress offers.
Image Credit: Bill Benzon, Flickr Creative Commons
2 comments
jux doesn’t work ……
i agree. its a helpful article, but please update it.