Apparently Typepad wasn’t the only blog company with a serious case of Tumblr envy.
It looks as if WordPress is releasing “reblog” and “like” features across its WP.com platform, enabling users to repost snippets of blogs they stumble across with a link back to the original post.
Today we’re introducing a new like and reblog feature enabled across the whole of WordPress.com. […]If you decide that you want to share the post with your own readers, you can click the “Reblog this post” link and you’ll be taken to the new QuickPress tab on the WordPress.com home page. This will auto-fill a snippet of the post text, a link back to the original post, and a link to the blog. If the post includes any images we’ll also automatically add a thumbnail image to the reblog post. Finally you can add your own comments to the reblog post then select which blog you’d like to post it to (if you have more than one). (Official WordPress Blog)
WordPress is probably launching this feature in order to counter the rise of Tumblr, a service that blurs the line between a micro blog (like Twitter) and a full featured blogging platform.
Thus far, Blogger has avoided the reblog feature, although BlogSpot fans and WP.org guru’s can imitate the reblog feature via Zemanta (who also has a WP plugin), although it may not be as smooth as WordPress’s implementation.
While mimicking may help convince a few users to stay within the walls of WordPress, users may still defect towards the micro blogging company as Tumblr offers users 100 mb of daily video space without charging them a dime.
