Astronaut Scott Kelly's Tumblr Takeover

Tumblr

We don't really talk about Tumblr all that much on here. It's not as huge a social media service as some of the others but that doesn't mean it's necessarily no good. We recently reported on how Yahoo aren't doing very well after they overestimated how much Tumblr would make for them but astronaut Scott Kelly seems to have found some use for the service.

Kelly only joined the site this year and with only a few weeks until he finishes his stint on the space station in March, some people might wonder why he's waited until now to sign up. Kelly has been using social media pretty effectively during his year in space so it might not seem necessary for him to try something new but it could be practical in helping tie everything together. Using Tumblr will not only allow him to share a mix of things easily - photos, questions, audio and video clips - but also type and share large amount of texts about his experience. He could essentially turn it into an archive once he was finished in space with links to what people would want to see from his other social media. Of course he could continue to use it normally and would probably gain quite a few followers wondering what life is like for an astronaut who has returned to earth. Science Tumblr and space lovers alike will probably be equally fascinated.

Kelly recently did an answer time session where he answered many questions put to him on the service. They were about food, space, general life up there and so on. It almost seemed like people were more curious in the mundane and I suppose that's where using Tumblr rather than Twitter works. No one wants to read a tweet about what someone does every day but speaking about it on Tumblr is easier as it's less of a spur of the moment thing. Something completely boring might be reblogged a thousand times because it fascinates people or they do the exact same thing. Reblogging is better than retweeting in some ways because you can add comments or you can just tag it and hey, if you want to find other people's posts you've reblogged easier among your own content then you can give it a special tag and post a link. It's the beauty of a blog feature with the sharing capabilities of Twitter, the messaging of Facebook and the quality of pictures that you might find on Instagram. And the fact is if people didn't already know that Kelly was on Tumblr sharing some of his gorgeous photography and the memes that amused him then they would after his answer time session was advertised. The Tumblr answer time wasn't the first Q&A that Kelly has done online and this isn't his first social media account but it's interesting how he's using it to link other things together. He's even posted on Twitter about things he's going to do on Tumblr.

Just joined @Tumblr from space! #Blizzard2016 inspired 1st post: Chasing Storms https://t.co/MlSuel3pfU #YearInSpace pic.twitter.com/kPEAfs07IW

— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) January 25, 2016

The last thing I want to make note of his the aesthetic of his blog, and no, I don't mean that in a pretentious way. Kelly doesn't have the greatest theme but it's a lot better than a lot of the other so called professional Tumblr accounts out there. It's still from their inbuilt theme garden but it's a good mix of accessibility and standing out as different. You can limit the amount of posts you load and the links are easy to find. His large header is just the background and the about me link is a pop up box. It doesn't look like something that was put together in five minutes and it'll be a nice page to access whether he continues to use it or just makes it an archive. There's links to his other social media accounts and even a Spotify playlist. Of course, it's not the greatest looking blog but it's one of the best I've seen for this sort of thing. It's going to allow Kelly to do a lot using Tumblr and his posts already get hundreds or thousands of notes depending on the subject matter. It's a fascinating use of the service and I for one look forward to seeing what else Kelly might share on Tumblr or how other professionals might follow in his footsteps.

Rosina Brooker

Rosina is a Songbird rookie with a degree in Creative Writing. She's trying to focus on her novel on the side but is hoping that Content Writing will turn out to be a good career choice in the mean time! Follow her @RosinaAtSMF

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