Tumblr plans to join the live streaming video party this week. The Yahoo-owned blogging platform added a cryptic teaser page to its website today, promising that the addition of live video will help its users "learn the metaphysical truth about your Tumblr."
The teaser, first spotted on Twitter by David Chartier, appears to be a standard Tumblr user's page, but offers various pithy promises, all of which it claims will be fulfilled tomorrow, June 21.
Besides metaphysical truths and a purported live broadcast from the surface of Mars, Tumblr's streaming video service will present more content along the lines of what you'd expect from live video, like a Harlem Globetrotter playing basketball and a Q&A with an artist from Brooklyn.
Some of it sounds too fanciful to be true, though TechCrunch said it was able to confirm the teaser site's authenticity, explaining that "these are ads from Tumblr itself."
Live video is a natural next step for Tumblr, given its expanding presence on other popular social media websites like Facebook and Twitter. The company's blogging format is similar to Facebook's in that visitors scroll through posts—which often include photos or video uploads—on a user's profile page.
One big difference between Tumblr and its social rivals is pornography: the company has steadfastly continued to allow explicit content on its site, even after Yahoo acquired it for $1.1 billion in 2013. There is a NSFW tag, which lets people flag pornographic content. Since details about Tumblr's live video offering are scarce, we don't know whether it will adopt the explicit-friendly attitude of the rest of the site.