Tumblr adds real-time notifications to site

Tumblr has added a new Facebook-esque feature that puts up real-time notifications on your dashboards. Thanks to this new addition, you can have more interesting images come up on your feeds without having to refresh the page over and over.

You can now see updates from all the blogs and people you follow on Tumblr in real time on your dashboard, almost like the Facebook ticker. The staff flaunted the new feature on their blog as a GIF file to show what the updates will look like.

The post accompanying the GIF read: “Check this out! We’re testing real-time notifications from people you follow. You should start to see them in the next few hours (and can toggle them on your Settings page). Enjoy!”

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Tumblr gets its own ticker!

As of now, the demo shows only posts of people who have commented, liked or reblogged your posts, but it does look like it will be more integrated over time.

The real-time update feature looks so simple and is so effective, one would wonder why it took so long for Tumblr to come up with something like this. Pinterest, Tumblr’s closest competitor when it comes to images, also has a system in place where you are notified of a new post. It isn’t the neatest notifier around, as clicking on it will take you to the top of the page, but it is something. Tumblr needs to catch up with real-time updates.

This new update might end up being an eye-sore, though. The ticker on Facebook is situated in the right of the page and can get pretty annoying on a generally static page. Thankfully, quite like the ticker, the Tumblr notifier can be turned off.

This ticker raises hopes for Tumblr that people will be tempted to check out more posts through it as compared to when the page is static and requires multiple refreshes. More clicks will mean more engagement for Tumblr and will also ensure that users stay on the site for longer.

Tumblr spruced up its iPhone and Android clients last September, adding more functionality to the apps. While the update to version 3.0 saw the interface being reshuffled with gestures, larger icons, and a new photo viewer, besides many performance improvements, the latest update lets users sync the app with their contact list and Facebook. The new social network integration makes for faster searching of friends’ blogs, tag tracking, reblogs, along with the ability to sign in from within the app itself.

This update built upon the long list of features in version 3.0, such as Spotify integration, offline functionality, tag searching and high-resolution images. Users can now send Fan Mail and use a new in-app notification system to be alerted of new events, besides having access to additional sharing options.