First it was Facebook fan pages that government agencies fell in love with, then it was official Twitter feeds, now comes the seemingly inevitable next step...the ubiquitous Tumblr blog.

The Daily Caller is reporting that federal agencies as varied as the State Department and the National Archives are adopting the popular blogging platform as the latest way to reach out to citizens. Mark Coatney, spokesman for Tumblr, told the website that over the past year the number of blogs on the service has ballooned from 6 million to roughly 21 million.

"What I like about them is that they really use it in a Tumblr-native way," Coatney said of the software's new fed adopters. "Tumblr is a visually-rewarding platform. For instance, the Peace Corps blogs a lot of archival photography to bring you in. I think they do that really well."

 A renewed focus on outreach and transparency in the federal sector has been a driving force behind this rapid adoption, at least according to one fed communicator. "The White House Open Gov Initiative really opened the possibilities for the National Archives and many other agencies to get involved in social media," National Archives Exhibits Tumblr blogger Rebecca Martin told the site.

"When you've got billions of records, you have some amazingly cool stuff," Martin said. "And Tumblr is one way that we can help people know about some of the wonderful, or shocking, or just silly stuff that people had no idea we had here."

Tumblr, or any other reliable blogging platform, is a truly ideal way for government communicators/social media mavens to reach out to constituents. Not as constrictive as Twitter or Facebook, blogs such as those powered by Tumblr can let an agency truly get its personality and issues out front and center to an audience. After all, there are only so many retweets and "likes" an agency can produce before it stops seeming "cutting edge" and becomes just as dull as your standard issue press release.