written by: Amani Liggett

A Tumblr Dashboard

Facebook’s glory days are fading. Yes, it’s true. The giant of social media has gotten, well, crowded. Parents are on it, grandparents are on it, and employers use it to decide whether to hire someone.

For the rest of us, it’s time to find a new playground. Many have found this in Tumblr, a blogging and picture based social media website. Tumblr is much more informal, and one can be as secretive or as intimate as you may desire. There is no pressure here to add all of your family members, the kid from math class, or your dentist.

And unfortunately for Facebook, Tumblr is more fun. Users are rarely bombarded by ads, or asked to join groups or play any sort of Farmville-type games.

Members of the Tumblr community often poke fun at each other and themselves, which helps make the website feel nonthreatening. Users often lament their exaggerated bad habit of staying online all day and all night, making anyone who reads the post feel a little better about their own over-use of the computer. You stay up until 4am watching re-runs on Hulu too?

And of course, they make fun of Facebook, mainly for the previously mentioned reasons. Its too boring, too old, too frumpy, too packed-full of a million different things happening on the sidebar.

Tumblr is also full of rants on every topic available. Users write essay-length comments and responses on topics ranging from the seriousness of abortion to the silliness of different Hogwarts house characteristics. It certainly is a fun and easy way to find other fans of books, movies, and TV shows. Finding someone on Facebook who also happens to like Green Day, Shakespeare jokes, and Sherlock Holmes would be far more challenging than on Tumblr.

There is a sense of community on Tumblr that Facebook does not have and probably will never be able to attain at this point. Facebook got very big, very fast, so there is no sense of a unique space because everyone is already there. Tumblr is the new alternative.

That is the way of social media, for a while, Myspace was king, and then fell to Facebook, which itself is now going downhill. Facebook is clearly going to have to step-up its game to stay on top. With the uprising of Tumblr and other less-well-knowns, as well as dissenters complaining of Facebook’s frequent changes (the new Timeline feature is not going over well) and controversial privacy rules, the giant is in trouble.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Social Media, Social Media News, Tumblr

Facebook is a wonderful tool for keeping track of your friends and family. It can also be helpful in developing professional and social contacts. But did you know that Facebook makes it easy to create and manage groups?

Folks manage groups on FB for all kinds of reasons, from social to political to work-related. Being a group administrator is not a difficult task, and the time committment depends on the level of  involvement you decide on. Here’s how you create a group:

1) On the left side of your homepage, find the link that says “Groups” and click on it.

2) On your groups page, you’ll see a grey box that says “Create a Group”. Click that box!

3) Now you should be on a page that asks for your group information. Fill in as much as you want to. The big decision is whether you want the group to be available to everyone on Facebook, or only people in your local network.

4) Once you’ve filled in all the blanks, click the “Create Group” button at the bottom of the screen.

5) This next page is about security and access options. Now is the time to figure out how much approval people will need to access your group.

6) After you save that, Facebook will take you to the Invites page. Congratulations! You’re ready to invite your friends to join your group and let the fun (or work) begin!

The best part? If at any point you feel overwhelmed and need to stop being administrator of the group, just tell Facebook. FB will pick a new administrator  from among your group members. You can walk away without worrying about your group dying!

Technorati Tags: access, coalition, create, Facebook, friends, fun, group, job, link, play, work