Tumblr users who have been waiting anxiously to unleash their inner social-media butterfly can rejoice: the Babblr Tumblr chat client will be officially launching on May 7 at 6 PM. If you sign up for the Babblr Tumblr chat client now, you can get it for free on its launch date. Otherwise, users will have to fork over a one-time fee of $0.99 for the Tumblr extension.
Signing up for Babblr now will also put you on the beta test list to try out the new chat client, although beta access is being granted in batches at the moment.
As it exists currently, Tumblr only allows users to follow blogs, posts and append re-blogged posts with their comments. The closest thing to chat functionality has been a "send fan mail" function that does what it sounds like it does. Babblr will be the first real-time communication feature ever baked into Tumblr.
"People want to communicate in realtime with their followers," Brandon Sowers, co-founder of Babblr told TechCrunch. "And this is a great tool for that."
After granting Babblr access to your Tumblr account, it will automatically take your contacts and use them to populate a chat list with three categories: Groups, Following and Followers. In the beta version, there is no function to delete individual users from the contact list, but the company confirms that in future releases, a feature called "stalker blocker" will be implemented.
According to Digital Trends, over 26,000 Tumblr users have already been given access to the Babblr beta test. If this is any indication, it seems safe to assume that the Babblr Tumblr chat client will have a fairly high adoption rate.
