Just noticed that Marissa Mayer is using a secondary blog on Tumblr. 

This is a common “wish I woulda known” issue for Tumblr noobs, and often causes problems.

Secondary blogs are when Tumblr lets you create additional blogs under your “main,” account, without having to sign-up separately for each one (unlike Twitter + Pinterest, which have rigid one-email, one-presence rule).

The problem with secondary blogs is that when you interact (Follow/Subscribe, Like, etc), the interaction comes from your primary username. Then people try to browse/follow you based on that primary username, without ever knowing about secondary URL/name. They assume the primary blog is “you,” and (possibly) follow a tumblr you didn’t intend for them to follow, even an empty/blank one. (In other words, the Discovery vector for secondary blogs is much more narrow. “No, that’s not me, follow me over here.”)

It looks like they grabbed the “marissamayer.tumblr.com” sub-domain to make sure nobody squatted it (I blogged about the new URL while trying to smoke out the Yahoo! acquisition rumor.), but then they made a secondary Tumblr with the stylized “e-less” R spelling of Mayer- Mayr, as a nod to Tumblr’s spelling, and that’s the tumblr she’s publishing with. Her second sub-domain is clever + fun, but they shouldn’t have made it a secondary blog.

If there are two URLs you want to preserve, I’d recommend making two separate Tumblr accounts, making each a “primary” blog.

(Secondary blogs have their place. And in general, letting users create additional blogs without having to re-register with different email addresses is very friendly, and something other social platforms could learn from.)

For more about how Tumblr secondary blogs work, check out this tutorial on by user unwrapping.

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earlier, discovering the placeholder this weekend, pre-announcement:

bluechoochoo:

Just followed: http://marissamayer.tumblr.com

An imperfect science (maybe somebody is just URL squatting?), but how can you resist?

[update: Somebody asked how checked the age of the URL. 
I used this tool: http://www.webconfs.com/domain-age.php.

There are many tools like it, it’s not necessarily the best. Checking the age of a URL (as opposed to the age of a domain) is an inexact science, as merely not being indexed could make a domain appear newer than it is. That said, the theme used (Tumblr’s current default theme), is another clue this is a pretty new URL).]

You’re currently reading the second post in a series about uploading photos to Instagram from from a Mac, which goes against nature.

[If you’re looking for Windows Instagram hack instructions, start here.]

This series goes a little something like this:

1. How to Install Bluestacks on a Mac and install Instagram on Bluestacks  [day one]
2. How to get Instagram to see your Mac file system and photos you have saved there, method one [you are here]
3. How to get Instagram to see your Mac file system and photos you have saved there, method two

Previously, on Dexter this blog, you 1) installed Bluestacks on your Mac, 2) installed Instagram on your virtual Android device (powered by Bluestacks), and  3) configured Instagram to look at existing files, not just its camera. You did all this without any code or command-line messiness. But let’s not get it twisted. You do have a magical fake Android running on your Mac now.

The last step you did was uncheck Use Instagram’s Advanced Camera in Instagram’s settings.

Now when you tell Instagram to take a picture, it knows to look for galleries of existing photos (good).

But all it finds are random Android operating system assets, instead of the lovely photos on your Mac (bad).

(NFI, either)

Let’s fix this situation. Let’s get Instagram see your Mac’s file system. There are multiple ways to do this, and this post is one of them.

1. We’re gonna install an app. So inside of Bluestacks, click home (if you’re not already there), then click the “search” icon.

2. Next you’re gonna search for “es file manager.”

3. A million overlapping, inter-related results, awesome! We’re gonna choose the first one. Click install.

4. Aaaaand now we’re at a second results screen (?!).
Just go with it.
As we did with the Instagram install, we’re gonna use the 1mobile market in the left-hand column, choose the first result for the ES File Explorer app. 

5. After we click it, ES File Explorer File Manager downloads and installs.

6. Inexplicably, this old search results window is hanging out here now. Close it.

7. We’re going to My Apps now (with a click). Here we see the Instagram app we installed earlier, and our new ES File Explorer app.
Click/launch the Instagram app.

8. We’re back in the Instagram app. Let’s “take a picture” by clicking the photo icon.

9. When Instagram asks, rather than use the Camera option, let’s choose Photo Gallery.

10. Well, well, well. What do we have here? A new option! Let’s choose ES File Explorer.

11. Yikes! A file system! But don’t be scared. Choose “bstfolder,” it’s the magic door to your Mac.

12. OK. Now those to folders look familiar “Documents”… “Pictures.” That’s because they’re YOUR Documents and Pictures folders on your Mac. For real.

13. Make sure you’ve copied the photos you want to upload to either your Documents or Pictures folder on your Mac (for this method). In this example, I’ve copied them to my Documents folder. So Instagram and Bluestacks is seeing the exact same folder that’s on my Mac.

See? Same: same.

Exact same Mac file system is visible on Bluestacks (and therefore to Instagram). #magic

14. I’m gonna choose the lil birdie pic on the left.

BOOM.

Bluestacks is your boyfriend.

I’ll leave you two alone. You’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

PS- You already have everything you need to view your Mac’s file system from Instagram. But if you/your agency/organization uses Dropbox, you may want to check out part 3- another hack to get from Mac to Instagram.