The Tumblr staff began testing out this feature over Christmas, but only opened it to all users today. If you're a Tumblr user, you'll have to head on over to the Messages area of your Dashboard to enable this function. (You can also enable anonymous questions, but as Tumblr warns, this could potentially lead to trolls getting up in your face.)
This feature is sure to be a boon to Tumblr bloggers, who already have a built-in community on the platform. Now, in addition to getting feedback in the form of comments, reblogs and "likes," users will be able to have actual dialogues with readers.
If you want to ask a blogger a question, simply go to your dashboard and pass your cursor over the user icon. The option to ask a question will appear when you do so. (It seems they're working out some bugs, because this took a few tries for me.)
You can then ask any question you want, but there are no promises that they'll answer...
The question then goes to the user's inbox. After reading, they can decide whether or not to answer the question, and publish it to their blog.
I, for one, am super excited about this new feature. It really demonstrates how Tumblr is becoming more of a social networking site than merely a blogging platform, and is sure to make connecting with my readers far easier.