Mr. Karp (Photo: Wikimedia)

Twitter only recently started to mission creep over to the media side, but microblogging platform Tumblr has always chosen to define itself as a media company. In fact, in an interview with IT Pro published today, CEO David Karp said explained how that self-perception informs their long-awaited attempts to monetize. 

Said Mr. Karp:

"Instead of focusing on the hyper-targeting that Google and Facebook are selling [to] advertisers right now - a direct response from the audience - we have built our advertising products around creative brand advertising because we're a media network. We have advertisers who are, rather than trying to capture intent, are trying to create intent."

The subtext here is that rather than banner ads or click-throughs, Tumblr wants to go old-school, with something more elusive. In an advertising climate that demands measurable data, Tumblr is swimming against the tide. "Success will be in making people care," IT Pro notes.

And as every "media network" knows, readers want see original content, which Mashable says is not something Tumblr has traditionally been known for. To demonstrate otherwise, Tumblr's editorial department launched a new site called Reblorg yesterday, a play on the "reblog" button. The company is billing the site as "Tumblr’s hub for original creative work," which includes, "video, animation, GIFs, glitches, music, paintings, challenge posts, contests, games, tech toys, collage, haiku, limericks, and kabuki coding." Users can submit posts by tagging them #reblorg.

"Our submission rules are simple: you must have made it, and it must be new."

Reblorg comes on the heels of Storyboard, Tumblr's attempt to curate the curators by interviewing creators on Tumblr and offering readers "tales from behind the dashboard."

To introduce Reblorg to the world, Tumblr commissioned its own Taiwanese animation video from Next Media Animation. That counts as "original," right?