Blogging burst on the web scene a decade ago which changed personal expression into an art form. For the first time, people were able to share their daily thoughts and experiences with anyone in the world who had an Internet connection. A short time later, many major news sites began adding op-ed weblogs as part of the digital experience, which gave blogging even more credibility. Some bloggers managed to build large audiences and obtain book deals through eloquent and thoughtful prose. Then Twitter was invented and the Internet landscape changed forever. Social media was born, and blogging had to adjust.
Twitter was designed as a microblogging platform, but the earliest versions were not practical for embedded media or following conversations. Software engineer David Karp immediately saw the problem and figured out a compromise between the old-school blog and the 140-character tweet. The solution was called Tumblr, and it launched in February 2007. Within two weeks, the service gained a userbase of 75,000 people.
What is Tumblr?
The Tumblr platform gave blogging a short format with more ways to interact. It allows users to easily and quickly post text, links, photos, audio and video, as well as “reblog” posts other people have made. While the service does not have a native commenting system like WordPress and Blogger, many Tumblr themes support third-party comment apps such as Disqus. Users can also simply “love” a post. All sharing and liking activity on a post is tallied as “notes”. Tumblr also allows the use of custom domains at no charge.
Tumblr’s strongest feature is the ability to blog from pretty much anywhere, including email. This has helped the service gain explosive growth as the popularity of smartphones, tablets and the mobile web spreads. The service offers slick mobile apps for both iOS and Android.
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Tumblr may not differ much from Facebook in terms of posted content, but it does offer the advantage of being more open and independent of the reciprocal friendship model of Facebook. Users can follow other users just like Twitter, a concept that was also incorporated into new social media network Google Plus.
Roughly half of the platform’s userbase is under the age of 25 and features many photographers, artists, activists and television program fandoms. As of April 2013, Tumblr has garnered around 13 billion total page views, with May data indicating that nearly 76 million posts are generated every day. Tumblr posts can be shared automatically to Twitter and Facebook, making the reach very wide.
Tumblr began a new chapter on May 20, 2013, when it was acquired by Yahoo for $1.1 billion in cash. David Karp and staff will remain in place to continue the Tumblr vision. The deal alarmed many Tumblr users, some of whom jumped ship onto other platforms despite reassurances from Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer that nothing would change. The move by Yahoo is largely thought to be driven by a need for a refreshed image after several turbulent years.
Regardless, Tumblr is considered to be one of the freshest, hippest places on the web, and that is expected to continue in the years to come. What is you view about the Yahoo! acquisition of Tumblr? Share your comments and views below, remember to subscribe to my RSS feed.
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I find it easy to use, but it can be a bit confusing to begin with.
Is it like facebook or twitter or any other social network site? – Not really. Like I said, it’s not a social networking site, it’s a microblogging site.
Yea not everyone finds it easy to use at first. I love synchronizing my blog posts as microblog posts t my Tumblr account using IFTTT
Hi Nwosu,
I am still learning quite a bit about Tumblr. Not sure whether to hop on board because Twitter, G Plus, FB and LI take up my time. You provided a helpful breakdown here, so it might be time for me to dig in a bit more.
Thanks!
Ryan
I’m excited for Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr and how it would take Tumblr to greater heights. I do have a question though regarding SEO – if I post on my blog and then post on Tumblr as well, would it be considered a duplicate post?
Thanks for the share in Bizsugar!
I use Tumblr just to submit my post as summary it helps me to gain few visitors, Tumblr is a Good Blogging platform, but far away from blogger and WordPress.
Great Info About Tumblr!
Thanks
Hi,
I did not used Tumblr ever. May be they do not have an attractive layout and theme. If tumblr uses a light color theme then I am sure they will have more social media engagement on tumblr.
You can effectively engage in all your social media networks if you know how to use automated tools like IFTTT. Check out http://netmediablog.com/free-social-media-automation-methods and see how you can engage on more social networks even without having to visit them everyday.
Since Tumblr is considered a microblogging platform, you can post an except of the main post on your blog on Tumblr and link back to the full article on your blog and gain a backlink. Google respects backlink from such authority sites, so that way it will never be considered a duplicate content.
Nishant you definitely understand the concept of microblogging with Tumble, check my earlier comment above and see how you can even make use of Tumblr effectively.
There are also premium and free theme store on Tumblr, maybe you can find a light background theme there. Check out http://netmediablog.tumblr.com/
Tumblr is indeed an awesome microblogging tool and i find it very interesting to use. Thanks for sharing and i believe Yahoo’s acquisition will help them gain a new facelift.
Nice post it is which describes the aspects of Tumblr.
I read many information related to it, but still I’ve to register myself there.
Thanks for letting your readers to read about some good data linked with tumblr, hope it would help the bloggers to do an enriched blogging with it :)
Thanks Nirmala i hope this article will be the one to convince you to try out Tumblr.
Hi desmond, its quite a long time i have been hearing of tumblr. I have not really laid my hand on it, at least this article is a challenge for me to look into tumblr and see how it can help me in all raminification.
Thanks for releasing this.
Glad you want to try Tumblr now…thanks for your comment.
I created a Tumblr a/c last week, and though I dont know too much about the way it works, I am loving it.
I can sure I can get a lot of traffic from it once I get to know it better.
I joined Tumbler long ago because I’d read good review about it. But I was quite immature at that time. I missed one crucial point about it at that time – it is about community. You either need to have a good community or you should be smart enough to pick the best community to join. I now believe, when I have a good community in Tumbler, the output can be multi-folded.
Thanks for bringing the point into discussion again and the news too!
Surely you can automate a post on it whenever you publish a new post with a tool i shared above called IFTTT
Thanks Suresh for your comment i hope you share your communities with me when you start mining the traffic
I have started using Tumblr for quite a while now and seriously it is better Actually much better than WP.
Mind sharing your microblog link?
Hm, that was interesting. To be honest, I had no idea of these specifics of Tumblr before. Now I think I should give it serious consideration.
Am glad you found the post interesting enough to want to try Tumblr. Thanks for your comment and always visit for more interesting articles.
Informative post indeed
Thanks for sharing it with us. Have a nice week ahead