In the last half of 2008, Twitter was turning heads. Celebrities, corporations, and mainstream media started learning what "microblogging" was and turned to it as a method of getting bytes of information out to people. Through 2009, it turned into a major factor in social media as websites and companies started putting Twitter buttons all over their sites.

If '08 and '09 were the years of Twitter's emergence, '10 and '11 may be known as the years of Tumblr's emergence as it is showing signs of gaining the same relevance that Twitter achieved.

Tumblr, it appears, is reaching a tipping point where it is rapidly becoming more commonly used by people and organizations, particularly mainstream news publications and social media communities like Facebook and Digg. The July peak of 1.5 billion page views seems likely to be broken in August, then again in September, and on for the foreseeable future.

Will it sustain?

Analysis

The Road to 1.5 Billion...

Launched in March, 2007 by founder David Karp and lead developer Marco Arment, Tumblr has traveled a bumpy road. Less than a year ago, it was accused of squandering its $10mil in investment capital with little hope of positive returns.

Something happened in early 2010. In the last 6 months, Tumblr has doubled its page views. Many attribute it to a thrust for the "tweener" social media site - more content than Twitter, less than a full blog. It is currently picking up 25,000 new accounts daily.

Regardless of why its growth spiked, one thing is certain. People are starting to notice it. The New York Times said Tumblr is Twitter's and Facebook's new rival.

What Makes Tumblr Special?

AOL technology blog Switched said this about Tumblr:

"For those who are looking for a way to express their thoughts and interests without having to partake in wordy meanderings, Tumblr is an ideal choice among blogging platforms."

Sitepoint asks:

"Is Tumblr the new Twitter?"

NetworkWorld comments:

"At times, I began to feel that Tumblr is what Facebook ought to be - easy to use, easy to customize, feature-rich, without a limit on the number of words in posts, and with a far less restrictive limit on the size of photos."

Therein lies the key to its appeal. Switched called it a blogging platform, Sitepoint compared it Twitter, and NetworkWorld compared it to Facebook.

Many use Tumblr as a simple alternative to Wordpress, Blogger, or Typepad with quick blogging, reblogging, and feed integration options that allow for faster, more automated methods of running a blog.

For others, it's a microblogging alternative to Twitter, allowing for quick sharing of thoughts without the absolute constraint of 140-characters. Unlike Twitter, videos and images can be posted directly to the stream rather than simply linked.

Other people use it as a community site similar to Vox and Ning. While the community aspect is less robust with "membership" happening simply by "following" a site, the communities are still extremely active and engaged with one another.

Perhaps the biggest differentiator between Tumblr and other social sites is the reblogging tool. Similar to Facebook, one can take content that they find on one Tumblelog and instantly share it on their own Tumblelog with a couple of button clicks.

Is it a blog? A microblog? A community? This lack of identity is, perhaps, helping Tumblr carve out a unique identity of its own.

Who's Using Tumblr?

Mainstream media is embracing Tumblr.

Businesses are embracing Tumblr. Currently, it is mostly small- to medium-sized businesses using it, but expect to see big corporations jump on the bandwagon just as they did with Twitter over a year ago.

Bloggers and social media users are embracing Tumblr.

For years, Wordpress has been the darling of social media sites. Its blogging functionality and abundance of themes and plugins have made it a natural choice for those who have the desire to spread a message, make money with content, or both to have an affordable platform where they could drive traffic.

Over the last several months, many of those who are savvy enough to use traffic-generators such as Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon have turned to Tumblr as their preferred content platform. In the last 30 days, Tumblr blogs (often referred to as tumblelogs or tumblogs) have accounted for 53 front page stories on Digg, driving an estimated 1.4 million unique visitors referred from the single social news site alone.

Conclusion

The initial question of "Will it sustain?" is still up in the air. It experienced Twitteresque growing pains when Tumblr went down for several hours last month.

Integration components will help make it more accessible from sites outside of Tumblr. The fact that it offers two venues - a tumblr.com subdomain or free hosting on a unique domain - gives it an advantage that other social media sites cannot offer.

In the end, it will come down to profitability. Like so many of its competitors, there doesn't seem to be a clear method for Tumblr to generate consistent revenue. The plan appears to be the same as Twitter's: get the users, lock them in, then unveil the money-making-method once you're big enough.

If it works, Tumblr is primed to be "the next big thing". If it doesn't, it may fall into obscurity as quickly as it is currently rising in relevance.

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Sean-Internetbeacon.com

Posted on Aug. 17, 2010

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Paul Ogle

Very interesting. You always wonder where the next social media platform is coming from, and it looks like Tumblr is working hard to make itself known.