Tumblr wants to make sure you know when you’re mentioned by friends on the Yahoo-owned blogging service.
For at least four months, users have been able to use the @-sign to autocomplete friends’ Tumblr usernames and automatically link to their blogs. The new wrinkle in the feature is that now when you’re mentioned, Tumblr notifies you on your Activity page.
Previously, Tumblr had three channels of communication that resulted in an alert. You could like posts, reblog posts, or send an “ask” in order for Tumblr to automatically alert a friend on their Dashboard that you’re trying to get in touch.
Tumblr staff is rolling the feature out slowly, so not all users will be able to receive alerts just yet. So far, nobody on the ReadWrite team has yet managed to verify the new feature, although CNET News reporter Jenn Van Grove took a screenshot that shows that it’s functioning for some users.
It’s nothing new that Tumblr is trailing behind in social features; Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have all had @mention-triggered user alerts for ages. Perhaps this is Yahoo’s response to Tumblr’s lagging growth earlier this year by adding a feature that has already proven itself elsewhere. Tumblr’s addition of this small but useful function will significantly catch it up to competing social networks.
Photo by Flickr user joshwept, CC 2.0
