More U.S. Federal agencies are joining Tumblr, the free blogging and social networking service, according to Federal Computer Week. It says the General Services Administration was the first to tumble. Now, the Peace Corp., the State Department and the National Archives have also joined the increasingly popular blogging platform.

Tumblr, founded in 2007 by David Karp, has raised funding from  Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital, Martin Varsavsky, John Borthwick (Betaworks), Fred Seibert, and Sequoia Capital and other investors. It has about 21 million users, up from 15 million in March.

We recently tried it out ourselves. Tumblr is extremely easy to use, share posts by others you follow or post photos, videos, audio or text. It’s also a lot of fun for casual browsing. It or its users may eventually face some copyright violation problems similar to those YouTube deals with, but since almost everything comes from the Web and sources are generally acknowledged, much of it may be deemed fair use.

The GSA jumped aboard in March with its USA.gov blog on the Tumblr platform. It offers news and tips from various federal agencies.

The National Archives is using the Tumblr blog to present images from its collections, such as old maps, photos and illustrations. Most of the Tumblr blogs are visually oriented.

Going by our own experience with the Tumblr platform, we suspect it will just continue to gain popularity. Businesses that use it properly may also find it effective, but as one Tumblr exec has pointed out, agencies or businesses or organizations will need to monitor and respond to feedback, not just post their own items. Social media experts who attend TechMedia’s annual Internet focused conferences (next is Digital East in Tysons Corner, VA in September) say again and again that listening is essential and as important as pushing out fresh content.

Some agencies may be wary of the Tumblr platform because of the ease of commenting and interacting. The FCW article notes that many agencies are using another blogging platform, WordPress, which is what TechJournal South uses.

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Tags: blogging platforms, business blogging, David Karp, federal agency blogging, Fred Seibert, GSA, John Borthwick, listening to social media, Martin Varsavsky, Peace Corp., Sequoiz Capital, Spark Capital, the U.S. State Department, Tumblr, Union Square Ventures, wordpress