Medium vs Tumblr: Comparing the Popular Blogging Platform - Blogging platforms like Blogger and WordPress are the most widely used platforms over the years. There are at least two slightly newer blogging platforms, Tumblr.com and Medium.com.
You may have heard that Tumblr is preferred by teenage bloggers, while Medium is mostly used by people who work in the technology and media industries. That may be true, but certainly, these two blogging platforms are among the trendiest and fastest growing social publishing sites today.
Although these two blogging platforms are used for the same purpose, they are very different when you compare some of the best qualities of each platform. Here is a comparison of some of the main qualities that exist on these two blogging platforms.
How People Use It
Tumblr: A highly visual blogging platform. People use it to share personal photos, photo sets, GIF animations, and videos. Posts in the form of text are also quite often used in Tumblr, but the visual content is the advantages of this platform.Tumblr users like to reblog postings from other users and add their own records in the caption section. Some popular posts can get hundreds of thousands of reblogs and also conversations left behind by other users in those posts.
Medium: Recognized as a high-quality publishing platform. Some talented writers use Medium as a medium for writing, compiling content from detailed research results, even personal stories. Medium users cannot "reblog" posts from other people like in Tumblr, but they can hit the heart icon to recommend a content.
Medium is somewhat similar to Twitter, and many bloggers share their post there.
Would you like to post more visual content like photos, videos, and GIFs? If yes, Tumblr may be the best choice for you. But if you want to post more content in text form, then Medium might be the best choice.
Design Features
Tumblr: You can design your blog appearance using either free or premium theme, and customize it to your liking. If you have coding skills, you can even make further arrangements. There are thousands of Tumblr themes available and can make your blog look like a professional site, complete with sidebars, social media buttons, special pages, comment columns, and more.Medium: Characteristic Medium is a very clean and minimal display with very limited features. Unlike Tumblr, you can not install a new theme with sidebars, music, or menus to change the overall look. Medium blog design looks very much like Twitter. You can post a profile photo, cover photo, a short bio description to be displayed on your blog, that's it.
Do you want to have a blog that has many customization options and unique themes? If yes, then you are fit to use Tumblr. But if you do not really care about the design and prefer the look of the blog clean and minimalist, then you are suitable to use Medium.
Blogging Features
Tumblr: Known for different types of multimedia posts. You can create posts that specifically display text, photos, links, chat dialogs, audio or video files.Tumblr also recently introduced the Medium-like formatting feature, which you can access by pressing the plus sign (+) when you are writing a post, or by highlighting any text. You can save the post-draft, and arrange it in the queue for posting in the selected time period.
Medium: Known for easy and intuitive formatting features (recently copied by Tumblr). Click the plus sign (+) when creating a new post to add photos, videos, links or to split paragraphs. Highlight any text to set the title style or paragraph, add a quote, set the alignment or add a link.
The draft will be saved automatically and you can click to share it as a draft if you want to input or edit from someone before publishing it.
Community Features
Tumblr: The user dashboard is where all the magic happens. When you follow other blogs, you can scroll all that you like, reblogging, and reply to posts from the dashboard."Notes", which represent all the likes and reassemble the post, can reach hundreds of thousands as they pass through it and reach a fair number of users. You can also contact someone personally, either as yourself or anonymously, and post to other blogs to show if they enable that option.
Medium: You can not reblog Medium posts, but you can recommend them so they appear on your profile and in the home feed of people who follow you. When you mouse over a paragraph, you'll see a small plus (+) sign appear on the right, which you can press to leave a note or comment.
Mobile App Features
Tumblr: So far the Tumblr blogging app is the most powerful. Most of Tumblr's activities come from mobile devices, including posts and interactions.Tumblr is very similar to the Twitter app, but with more visual and post features. You can do many things via the Tumblr mobile app just as you can in the web version.
Medium: Meant for browsing only, but this may change in the future. You can view your home feeds, top stories, and bookmarks.
Currently, in Medium there is no function to create posts from mobile apps, but you can still interact by following other users, recommending a post and sharing it. Medium mobile apps are also only available for iOS devices for a while.
