Conan O’Brien is Now on Tumblr

Looks like the rumored Conan O’Brien Tumblr is now live. The “old media” has now “done been” officially “shown up.” He writes of his new show: “As you can see, we still have a bit of work to do….” While we’re at it, we might as well air out a Tumblr rumor we’ve heard from, like, four different people now:

That Gawker Media and Tumblr have been talking about integrating “reblogging” buttons on the blog network’s posts — the same way Tweetmeme and Facebook “Share” buttons work — as part of their forthcoming redesign, which would be the first of its kind. A common and fair criticism is that Tumblr’s better for brand-building as it isn’t necessarily proven to drive traffic significant traffic to Big/Old/Mainstream/Whatever Media sites. So why not have big media sites pulling users from social media tools with the appeal of easy integration? It’s a smart idea, but again, just being talked about right now; the finished Gawker redesign is actually a while away.

Meanwhile, with big names like Conan O’Brien and (noted media critic) John Mayer now taking to and embracing the platform, will it inspire a surge of users for the young, well-covered company? The service will still certainly be nothing on the level of Twitter, as its long been noted — because it doesn’t have invalid-friendly functionality — but still, it’s a promising, big “get” for them.

[fkamer@villagevoice.com]