(Newser)
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Is Tumblr the Next Big Thing in social media? The New York Times seems to think so, giving it a feature in today’s paper—and you might see more such coverage soon, because the small blogging site is specifically trying to reach out to the media. It hired former Newsweek writer Mark Coatney as the company's “media evangelist,” charged with getting major publications to put content on their Tumblr pages.
Coatney describes Tumblr as “a space between Twitter and Facebook” and says it’s better than other social media outlets for displaying images, video, and other multimedia. The New Yorker has used that to publicize some of its covers, to good effect. But the site is still relatively small, and it requires more work than Twitter. Coatney predicts it’ll pay off, but “it’s a huge leap of faith” for publishers, he tells the Times. “You may not be getting new readers at that particular moment.”
