Microblogging service Tumblr is introducing a few new features today. My favorite is the Tumblr Wire, which is replacing the popular page. Tumblr Wire is a discovery page that shows a constantly-updating stream of images moving across a grid. Each image links to a Tumblog that was updated recently.
The selections are random and photo-heavy, but it also highlights text in a big, fancy font. The whole interface seems, um, highly-influenced by enjoysthin.gs. But it’s a good, visual interface (see also, WeAreHunted), and I hope to see more of it. It makes you just want to sit and watch all the Tumblogs go by. There sure is a lot of soft porn on Tumblr.
Tumblr is also launching Tumblr Projects, a marketplace that matches designers from the Tumblr community with professional publishers and companies who want a slick Tumblog. Designers need to be certified by Tumblr, but it’s a smart way to get higher quality Tumblogs created. Up until now, Tumblr has been designing many of the high-profile Tumblogs itself, so now it can offload much of that work and help its community make money at the same time.
Finally, the terms of service on the site was changed to make it clear that members own any content they put on the site and can remove it at any time. Glad that’s cleared up.
