The Obsession With Tumblr – Charting Spectacular Growth
Blogging has been around for over a decade and Twitter for half that amount of time and the two platforms have lived happily side by side for the last few years but a new upstart is coming along quietly to wedge itself firmly in the middle and offer something new…Tumblr. It’s on a spectacular growth curve and the site is appealing to an entirely new audience who want something more casual than full on blogging but a little more meaningful that short tweets. Where Tumblr has had most of it’s success is wedging itself on to smart phones as an entirely new way of sharing rich media content when you are on the go. If anything it looks like Tumblr is at the very start of it’s growth and they look well positioned to benefit from all the trends that are coming together now including the shift to blogging, mobile and content sharing. Here are some of the reasons why Tumblr is growing as fast as it is today and set to become one of the big runaway success stories of the year…
It’s Blogging For The Man In The Street
Any time I am training newbies on social media now I bring them to Tumblr instead of full on blogging and without exception people of all ages can learn and understand the platform within an hour. For all the advances in blogging platforms there has always been that little bit of fear when people are confronted with things like HTML and embedding video code but Tumblr does away with all those things. The biggest benefit of Tumblr is that is is more or less idiot proof and it allows people with limited technological ability to be up and running in minutes. I can see from the sheer stunned look on people’s faces when I show them that they literally can’t believe they created their own blog post within 5 minutes.
Unreal Growth
Tumblr has actually been around for a few years now but it is really in the last 8-10 months that it has really started to hockey stick in terms of growth. Across all the various sites hosted on Tumblr there are now a huge 2.5 billion page views per month and you can see from the graph below just how that growth is speeding up.
Utterly Mobile
What makes Tumblr really stand out as something different is it’s incredibly simple to use mobile app that makes blogging just about as easy as it has ever been. The app has a super clean UI and taking pictures or capturing small pieces of text while on the go has never been easier. This is where Tumblr has really found it’s niche because although you might tweet on the go there is very little chance that you will write a full blog post (WordPress do have an app though) but as people seek to share more rich media content from their mobile Tumblr has stepped in to fill that gap. As we all start to embrace mobile more than ever and spend more time away from laptops and desktops Tumblr will grow even further especially when you consider that smartphones are not ubiquitous yet.If you have not used Tumblr on the phone yet you will be stunned at just how easy it is to use and if anything it brings even more simplicity to the act of blogging than the website itself.
More Substance Than Twitter
Twitter is brilliant as a communication tool but the big problem is that as soon as you share something it is as good as gone and lost in the big black hole of old Twitter content. You can share photos, videos and text on Twitter but with Tumblr it actually has it’s own home and a place where yourself and others can go back and reference it at a later date.
