A Call For Interoperable Tumbling: Tumbleback

In an earlier post today, regarding Typepad’s release of Micro, a new ‘micro blogging’ implementation on the Typepad platform, I called for interoperable tumbling between blog platforms:

[via www.stoweboyd.com]

Reblog is not built in to every blog, so even if I am an active Typepad Micro user, I can’t reblog every post of every Typepad blog. It requires the blog’s owner to change to a Micro template, like Chroma. This is a major problem, and will slow the adoption of Micro. At the very least Six Apart should add a reblog capability to the bookmarklet, so that users can reblog all Typepad blog posts. This might even be extended to support reblogging of other blogging platforms’ posts, like Tumblr, Moveable Type, and Wordpress, for example. Ultimately, interoperable reblogging and favoriting are going to be demanded by users. It is a social good for interoperability of this sort to exist. In fact, I am going to kick off a project in Microsyntax.org calling for conventions to be considered that will support this.

I would like to expand briefly on what I think is called for.

1. A convention — like trackbacks — needs to be established, so that a message can be sent by one platform, like Typepad, to another, like Tumblr, on behalf of an author. I propose we call this ‘tumbleback’, plural ‘tumblebacks’.


2. Let’s say I want to reblog a post from a Tumblr blog on my Typepad blog. I might use a Typepad bookmarklet that is Tumblr-aware. When I select a post on a Tumblr blog, and use the reblog capability in the bookmarklet, it would a/ post the reblog on my Typepad blog, and b/ send a message to Tumblr, indicating the reblog.


3. The cross-platform reblog would look much like a regular, within a single platform reblog, with the name and URL of the source blog displayed.


4. The message sent from Typepad on my behalf would be received by Typepad, and the fact that I reblogged the post could be included on the ‘notes’ history associated with the source blog post. This means that readers of the original post would see that I had reblogged it.


5. Tumblr might send a message back to Typepad including information that would allow Typepad to display the notes history of the source blog on the post I created. Alternatively, this could be provided by an API. Likewise, as other Typepad users reblog my post Typepad could pass these notes along. In this way the full reblog history (and favorites or likes, as well) could be maintained at the original source post, and shared by everyone.


6. I think some new microsyntax is called for, that would indicate the platform, author, and other metadata associated with these cross-platform trails. More to follow on that.


7. The addition of downstream reblogs and likes/favorites could be added to the streams of participants by the various services.

I will be contacting representatives of Typepad, Tumblr, and perhaps other tumble blog companies to discuss these ideas, and invite them to participate in a Microsyntax initiative to define conventions (and perhaps de facto standards) to allow such interoperability to work.

As I said, this would clearly be in the public interest. We should not have a divided world between various emerging tumbling platforms, despite near-term business interests of the competing companies. I saw this happen in the instant messaging world, and the resulting fragmentation benefited no one, not even the vendors who refused to do the right thing.