Social Networking, Blogging | featured news

The design of Tumblr, the blogging tool and social network, is guided by feeling. In particular, the feelings of David Karp, the company’s 26-year-old founder, whose instincts tend to run counter to current Web conventions. Tumblr does not display “follower” counts, for example, or other numerical markers of popularity that are viewed as crucial social-media features, because Karp finds them “really gross.” The culture of public friend-and-follow reciprocity that theoretically expands a social networking service can, in his view, “really poison a whole community.”

Twitter just announced that it has acquired Posterous, the YCombinator-backed blogging and sharing platform that competed early on with Tumblr.

Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.

Start-up Posterous, best known for its simple blogging service via email, has revamped the company around a new product called Posterous Spaces, which is designed to help people easily privately share photos and videos with friends or family.

Long-form blogs were once the outlet of choice, but now sites like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr are favored.

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft announced today at the TechCrunch Disrupt Conference in San Francisco, California that its 30 million Windows Live Spaces bloggers will be moved to WordPress.com over the next six months.