By Staff Writer – Boonsri Dickinson (@boonspoon)

I signed up for Tumblr yesterday. The appeal was obvious. It was easier to post pictures and add text to, compared to my experience with other blogging sites.

As it turns out, Tumblr has been undergoing some changes recently. The blogging site announced that it’s going to adapt the Twitter API into its site. This means everything you do in Twitter, you can now do in Tumblr. For instance, retweeting takes the form of reblogging. And instead of favorites, there’s liking. More significantly, this opens up the micro-blogging applications to the blogging world. Anyone with an iPhone, who uses Tweetie 2 and Twitterrific 2 apps, can now post and read blogs through Twitter API if they use Tumblr or Wordpress.com.

If more sites begin to adopt Twitter API, it could soon become a standard way to send out open communication messages. Will Twitter API become the next form of RSS, FTP, or HTTP? Regardless, this integration could have more immediate effects on Tumblr’s reach. It could help it gain more users and shed its “underdog” reputation. Besides being user friendly, Tumblr is positioning itself to become the middleman of the social media world:

Essentially, Tumblr is a mashup of popular social networking sites – users can bookmark favorite blogs and entries (think Digg), easily share photos (think Flickr), reblog new finds to share with others (think Twitter), and connect with networks of friends (think Facebook). The Tumblr team has worked hard to make their platform into a supportive community, where the talents of others are highlighted by their peers, and embraced by all – something that is not available on more individual-focused platforms like WordPress and Blogger.

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