The most reblogs I've ever gotten on Tumblr is 27.

This beagle-on-the-tracks image got reblogged and hearted 59,000 times.

I must be doing Tumblr wrong.

Btw, Reblogging was not in Tumblr's original design.

Here's what David Karp had to say about reblogging when he released reblogging (along with follow!) in Tumblr 2.0:

"Tumblelogs are already the easiest way to share stuff you find or create. But next time you want to share something you find on another tumblelog, just ReBlog it. ReBlogging let’s you quickly share content you discover on other tumblelogs, and even add or change the commentary."

Old school bloggers still consider reblogging to be more plagiarism than copying.

Especially when the original attribution is removed.

I'm still trying to understand why people reblog.

There's a great answer from a Tumblr teenager on Quora:

Why I mostly reblog: passing along the things that I love.

Reblogging is a great and made-easy way to define my newly-established online self. It is how I quickly pass along the things that I care about and keep my followers interested in my blog. Despite it not consisting of all-original content, my blog is the equivalent of making a portfolio to sum myself up. I spend much time and care making my blog unique and look good.

My followers rely on me for discovery, as I rely on the people I follow. So, I feel responsible for doing just this; not doing so would run the risk of me losing followers, which will impact the amount of users who see my original content when I choose to write something myself or post a photo of mine or a video I found. So as I am browsing my feed for hours and hours, I am also looking for things that I think my followers would be interested in, like to see, or content that would go nicely given the other stuff on my blog. And, yeah, it is endless, which only increases the amount of time I spend on the site (the scrolling is set up so that as I near the bottom, more content loads). And I see it as crucial that I search through everything in my feed since my last visit to Tumblr, as I wouldn't want to miss anything potentially interesting (that may make good blogging material or just suits my own interests).

So essentially reblogging is:

1. A responsibility to share with followers.

2. A technique to get new followers.

3. A means of self expression.

Ultimately, why was the beagle on the tracks reblogged 59,000 times?

Because you can never go wrong reblogging cute animal images.

This is true not only on Tumblr, but also on Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit, 9gag, and Imgur...

Hence the beagle will get reblogged a lot more than this woman sitting on a track.

This little girl with a puppy is cute, but the neon wording needs to go.

This picture of a track is good, but it lacks a human or cute animal.

Actually, maybe the words ruin the picture. Our original beagle doesn't need words, right?