Exploring the official Tumblr app for your Nokia Lumia

I love the dashboard on the Tumblr homepage that tells you the total number of Tumblr blogs in existence and how many individual posts have been uploaded today. 

There are now well over 100 million Tumblr blogs – there’s no point giving you the precise figure because by the time you are reading this that figure will have only grown.

Tumblr was only launched in 2011 but the statistic illustrates just how quickly it has become an established part of the social media landscape.

In the last couple of weeks, there has been another Tumblr landmark moment too: the release of the official app (free) for Windows Phone 8 smartphones.

There are a few third party Tumblr apps in the Windows Store already, but this is the first time you can explore other blogs, or update your own, using Tumblr’s own app. 

If you don’t have one already, the first thing you’ll need to do after installing the app is sign up for a Tumblr account and sign in. It doesn’t take long. You just need an email address, think of a password and your username.

Exploring Tumblr

Just like other social networks, you can use Tumblr to post your own images and thoughts, and you can also follow other people’s blogs. It’s a real hive of human activity and interests so there’s bound to something of that is worthy of your attention.

The first screen you see on the app is the ‘Dashboard’ – think of this as your timeline in Twitter or newsfeed in Facebook. Here you’ll see the latest posts of Tumblr blogs you follow or tags that you’ve saved. 

If you’ve been using Tumblr for a while, then you’ll be up and running as soon as you’ve logged in. If you’re new, then you have to start by swiping across to the ‘Explore’ screen.

In ‘Explore’ you can search for topics that interest you using tags.

Found a blog you’d like to follow? Tap on the name of the blog and then press the follow icon ‘+’.Posts from this blog will now appear automatically in your Dashboard. It’s that simple.

When you are following a blogs, you’ll start to get a real feel for this Tumblr app. All the images look optimised and the layout has been well thought out. Even the GIFs and videos work natively within the app.

Posting to Tumblr

The other key function of this official Tumblr app is that you can post your own blog updates wherever and whenever you like.

To get started, press the ‘write’ icon along the bottom of any of the screens. You get the following options:

Most commonly, you’ll be updating publishing text or images. The chat and quote options are basically text posts but there’s some nice formatting to make it look good as a conversation strand or as a stand out quote.

Sending text is as easy as writing an email or SMS – you have the option of writing a headline and then you write in the body of your text. If you want to gain some followers of your own, don’t forget to add some tags. 

When you’ve finished, you can select the tick icon to publish it straight away, or alternatively, you can choose to save it as a draft or add it to your queue for publishing later. 

Likewise, with the photo, you can select to take a picture, or choose an image from your photo albums. You can add a caption, some tags and, again, you can publish it immediately or save it for later.

Tumblr users will love this app; it gives them all of the important functionalities and features that attracted them to Tumblr in the first place. On top of that, there are a few nice extras too.

There’s Live Tile support, including the wide tile, so you can see the latest images on your Dashboard without even opening the app. You can even keep your lock screen updated using Tumblr.

Have you used the Tumblr app? Let us know what you think in the comments below.