Question

Definitions, infos in Tumblr before my question to be all clear:

  1. In Tumblr all user account had a primary blog, for example noticiasdepoliticahoy.tumblr.com .
  2. This user can create secondary blogs, what had a limitations: cannot follow as secondary blog other blog, cannot like this secondary blog other blog, just the primary account user.

My questions:

Q1: how I know when I following any Tumblr blog, this is someone's primary blog or secondary blog?

Q2: If I follow the user's secondary blog, how I know this user primary blog name?

Real world example with example Tumblr blog names: 1. I following ABC1.tumblr.com blog 2. I following ABC2.tumblr.com blog 3. DEFG3.tumblr.com user started following me 4. HIJK4.tumblr.com user started following me

How I know who is the owner of ABC1.tumblr.com and ABC2.tumblr.com blog?

If I check blog with http://postlimit.com, I can get informations what maybe helps to detect this blog primary or secondary.

Check this, 3queries, first maybe primary account and 2 secondary:

URL:                http://whisperedepiphanies.tumblr.com/  
Username:           whisperedepiphanies
Blog Title:         ~whispered epiphanies~
Total Posts:        6539
Allows Ask:         Yes
Allows Ask (anon):  Yes
Number of Likes:    6685
Shares Likes:       Yes


URL:                http://noticiasdepoliticahoy.tumblr.com/    
Username:           noticiasdepoliticahoy
Blog Title:         Noticias de Política
Total Posts:        1169
Allows Ask:         No
Allows Ask (anon):  No
Number of Likes:    Not Shared
Shares Likes:       No 

URL:                http://lobo-de-luna.tumblr.com/     
Username:           lobo-de-luna
Blog Title:         In ignota
Total Posts:        2011
Allows Ask:         Yes
Allows Ask (anon):  Yes
Number of Likes:    Not Shared
Shares Likes:       No 

So, secondary account now not had share likes. But how to know - back to my example - who is the owner of secondary blog?

For example if I want only follow who is following me, but I following the user's secondary blog and the user started following me, I will unfollow his blog because not his primary blog and I don't know who is the owner of that not primary blog.

You clearly understand what I want to know?

Summary: how I can know if I follow any user's secondary blog, then this owner of secondary blog start following me (but of course I don't following his primary blog what same as his user account, blog name) ?

Was it helpful?

Solution

A very interesting question! From my experience:

tl;dr

Sadly, the answer to all your questions is no, it isn't easily achievable.

Tumblr Name and Tumblelog Names

When you join Tumblr, you choose a tumblr name and a tumblelog is created.

A tumblelog also has a name, for clarity we will reference this as tumblelog name.

On the first tumblelog, which is classed as your primary tumblelog, your tumblr name and tumblelog name are the same.

When you create another tumblelog, which is classed as primary, your tumblr name and tumblelog name will be different.

The key to take away from this. All tumblelogs are linked by the tumblr name only.

Interaction on Tumblr

When you like a post on Tumblr, you do it under your tumblr name. The information that is recorded, links to your primary tumblelog and its tumblelog name.

When you reblog a post on Tumblr you do it under your tumblr name. However, you have the choice of which tumblelog you will post the reblog to, so the tumblelog name is used.

Answering your questions.

How to know if a tumblelog is a users primary or secondary blog?

If I follow the users secondary tumblelog, how can I find their primary tumble log?

Afaik, there is no simple / easy way to find this information out as the API returns the tumblelog name and not the tumblr name. The tumblr name is the link between all the users tumblelogs and it isn't supplied.

But.. But..

You could play detective. You could take the tumblelog name, query the API at someuser/info. If it comes back with a response, you would know the account is primary (As above, on a primary tumblelog the tumblr name and tumblelog name will be the same).

You could then look at the blogs info in the response and see all the blogs linked to that tumblr name.

However, I wouldn't advise it. I believe there is a reason Tumblr doesn't provide this information, anonymity, and I feel it should stay that way. Its probably against the ToS as well!

Hope that helps!

References:

Tumblr Name: http://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/api/v2#user-methods

Blog Name: http://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/api/v2#blog-info

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