Remember when you got this screen when trying to access your Tumblr?
I remember when the headlines started crashing in in the social media sphere: “Tumbler is Down.” With over 3 million users and averaging 2 million posts per day, I was confident that they had some sort of contingency plan. Two hours into the outage, I read tweets from Tumblr saying they were working furiously to get Tumblr back on. Even Tumblr founder David Karp had something to say about it. Then the angry/panicked tweets ensued from users. In a nearly 24-hour cycle, Tumblr is once again online with no online content compromised (according to Tumblr President John Maloney, though it wouldn’t hurt to double check), but it’s certainly left a foul taste in our social networking experience.
To be fair to Tumblr, they launched a backup app last year that lets users save their blogs. It’s really easy to use: just download the app; sign-on with your regular Tumblr info; and save your blog to your desktop. It should look like this:
You can even back it up on a CD. It really is that easy to backup your blog, but it’s so easy that most of us just fall into the trap of not getting around to it. We’ve all heard the horror stories (lost wedding photos, term papers), don’t let it happen to you or your Tumblr.
It’ll be interesting to see in the coming days whether other major social networking sites like facebook and twitter will create some sort of backup app. Imagine losing all your tweets, pictures, fans, friends, notes, comments! Please share your thoughts, ideas, and panic attacks while Tumblr was down.
Written By: Jaszver Bauzon