Tumblr facts for kids
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The Tumblr login/sign up page; a different background image is displayed each time the page is loaded.
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| Type of business | Subsidiary |
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| Founded | February 2007 |
| Headquarters | New York City, U.S. |
| Founder(s) | David Karp |
| Key people | Matt Mullenweg (CEO) |
| Industry | Microblogging, social networking service |
| Employees | 411 (as of June 2017[update]) |
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Tumblr (pronounced "tumbler") is a microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by American company Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog.
Contents
History
Beginnings (2006–2012)
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Development of Tumblr began in 2006 during a two-week gap between contracts at David Karp's software consulting company, Davidville. Karp had been interested in tumblelogs (short-form blogs, hence the name Tumblr) for some time and was waiting for one of the established blogging platforms to introduce their own tumblelogging platform. As none had done so after a year of waiting, Karp and developer Marco Arment began working on their own platform. Tumblr was launched in February 2007, and within two weeks had gained 75,000 users. Arment left the company in September 2010 to work on Instapaper.
In June 2012, Tumblr featured its first major brand advertising campaign in collaboration with Adidas, who launched an official soccer Tumblr blog and bought ad placements on the user dashboard. This launch came only two months after Tumblr announced it would be moving towards paid advertising on its site.
Ownership by Yahoo! (2013–2018)
On May 20, 2013, it was announced that Yahoo and Tumblr had reached an agreement for Yahoo! Inc. to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash. Many of Tumblr's users were unhappy with the news, causing some to start a petition, achieving nearly 170,000 signatures. David Karp remained CEO and the deal was finalized on June 20, 2013. Advertising sales goals were not met and in 2016 Yahoo wrote down $712 million of Tumblr's value.
Verizon Communications acquired Yahoo in June 2017, and placed Yahoo and Tumblr under its Oath subsidiary. Karp announced in November 2017 that he would be leaving Tumblr by the end of the year. Jeff D'Onofrio, Tumblr's president and COO, took over leading the company.
The site, along with the rest of the Oath division (renamed Verizon Media Group in 2019), continued to struggle under Verizon. In March 2019, SimilarWeb estimated Tumblr had lost 30% of its user traffic since December 2018, when the site had introduced a stricter content policy. In May 2019, it was reported that Verizon was considering selling the site due to its continued struggles since the purchase (as it had done with another Yahoo property, Flickr, via its sale to SmugMug).
Automattic (2019–present)
On August 12, 2019, Verizon Media announced that it would sell Tumblr to Automattic, the operator of blog service WordPress.com and corporate backer of the open source blog software of the same name. The sale was for an undisclosed amount, but Axios reported that the sale price was less than $3 million, less than 0.3% of Yahoo's original purchase price. Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg stated that the site will operate as a complementary service to WordPress.com, and that there were no plans to reverse the content policy decisions made during Verizon ownership.
In November 2022, Mullenweg stated that Tumblr will add support for the decentralized social networking protocol ActivityPub. In November 2023, most of Tumblr's product development and marketing teams were transferred to other groups within Automattic. Mullenweg stated that focus would shift to core functionality and streamlining existing features.
In February 2024, Automattic announced that it would begin selling user data from Tumblr and WordPress to Midjourney and OpenAI. Tumblr users are opted-in by default, with an option to opt out.
Features
Blog management
- Dashboard: The dashboard is the primary tool for the typical Tumblr user. It is a live feed of recent posts from blogs that they follow. Through the dashboard, users are able to comment, reblog, and like posts from other blogs that appear on their dashboard. The dashboard allows the user to upload text posts, images, videos, quotes, or links to their blog with a click of a button displayed at the top of the dashboard. Users are also able to connect their blogs to their Twitter and Facebook accounts, so that whenever they make a post, it will also be sent as a tweet and a status update. As of June 2022, users can also turn off reblogs on specific posts through the dashboard.
- Queue: Users are able to set up a schedule to delay posts that they make. They can spread their posts over several hours or even days.
- Tags: Users can help their audience find posts about certain topics by adding tags. If someone were to upload a picture to their blog and wanted their viewers to find pictures, they would add the tag #picture, and their viewers could use that word to search for posts with the tag #picture.
- HTML editing: Tumblr allows users to edit their blog's theme using HTML to control the appearance of their blog.
- Custom domains: Tumblr allows users to use custom domains for their blogs. Users must purchase a domain from Tumblr Domains, an in-house registrar that provides domains that can only be used with Tumblr unless removed from the user's blog and transferred to another registrar. Blogs previously were able to be linked with any domain/subdomain from any registrar, however following the introduction of the Tumblr Domains service, now requires you to purchase a domain directly from Tumblr to be used with a blog. Users who kept their blogs connected to a domain after the introduction got to keep their custom domain, as long as they don't disconnect it from Tumblr or let the domain expire.
Tags
The tagging system on the website operates on a hybrid tagging system, involving both self-tagging (user write their own tags on their posts) and an auto-manual function (the website will recommend popular tags and ones that the user has used before.) Only the first 20 tags added to any post will be indexed by the site. The tags are prefaced by a hashtag and separated by commas, and spaces and special characters are allowed, but only up to 140 characters total per tag.
There are two main types used by Tumblr users: descriptive tagging, and opinion or commentary tagging. Descriptive tags are usually introduced by the original poster, and describe what is in the post (i.e. #art, #sky). These are important for the original poster to use, so their post will be indexed and searchable by others wishing to view that subject of content. Tags used as a form of communication are unique to Tumblr, and are typically more personal, expressing opinions, reactions, meta-commentary, background information, and more. Instead of adding onto the reblogged post (with their comments becoming an addition to each subsequent reblog from them) a user may add their comments in the tags, not changing the content or appearance of the original post in any way. Not all users choose to use tags this way, but those who do use tags for commentary prefer it over adding a comment on the actual post.
Mobile
With Tumblr's 2009 acquisition of Tumblerette, an iOS application created by Jeff Rock and Garrett Ross, the service launched its official iPhone app. The site became available to BlackBerry smartphones on April 17, 2010, via a Mobelux application in BlackBerry World. In June 2012, Tumblr released a new version of its iOS app, Tumblr 3.0, allowing support for Spotify integration, hi-res images and offline access. An app for Android is also available. A Windows Phone app was released on April 23, 2013. An app for Google Glass was released on May 16, 2013.
Inbox and messaging
Tumblr blogs have the option to allow users to submit questions, either as themselves or anonymously, to the blog for a response. Tumblr also previously offered a "fan mail" function, allowing users to send messages to blogs that they followed.
On November 10, 2015, Tumblr introduced an integrated instant messaging function, allowing users to chat with other Tumblr users. The feature was rolled out in a "viral" manner; it was initially made available to a group of 1,500 users, and other users could receive access to the messaging system if they were sent a message by any user that had received access to the system itself. The messaging platform replaces the fan mail system, which was deprecated. The ability to send posts to others via the Dashboard was added the following month.
Discontinued features
In May 2012, Tumblr launched Storyboard, a blog managed by an in-house editorial team which features stories and videos about noteworthy blogs and users on Tumblr. In April 2013, Storyboard was shut down.
In March 2018, Tumblr began to syndicate original video content from Verizon-owned video network go90, as part of an ongoing integration of Oath properties, and reported plans to wind down go90 in favor of using Oath properties to distribute its content instead. This made the respective content available internationally, since go90 is a U.S.-only service. Go90 shut down at the end of the following July.
In November 2019, Tumblr introduced "group chats"—ephemeral chat rooms surfaced via searches, designed to allow users to share content in real-time with users who share their interests. Posts would disappear after 24 hours and could not be edited. The group chat function was discontinued on September 22, 2021.
On July 21, 2021, Tumblr launched Post+ for some beta users, allowing bloggers to monetize their content. Post+ was removed in January 2024 due to low usage.
At the end of 2022, Tumblr announced a livestreaming service called Tumblr Live. Tumblr Live was an adapted version of The Meet Group's product Livebox. In 2024, Tumblr announced that they would be discontinuing Tumblr Live as of January 24, with options for users to migrate to MeetMe.
A feature that allowed users to tip small amounts of money to other users, introduced in February 2022, is scheduled to be removed on June 1, 2024 due to low usage.
Usage
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Tumblr has been noted for the socially progressive views of its users. In 2011, the service was most popular with the teen and college-aged user segments with half of Tumblr's visitor base being under the age of 25. In April 2013, the website received more than 13 billion global page views.
User activity, measured by the number of blog posts per quarter, peaked at over 100 million in early 2014 and declined in each of the next three years, to approximately 30 million by October 2018.
As of May 2019[update], Tumblr hosted over 465 million blogs and more than 172 billion posts in total with over 21 million posts created on the site each day.
LGBTQ+ content and community
Multiple researchers looking into Tumblr have found that the website is often used as for community-building and a place to explore identity formation and gender expression for LGBT groups.
Corporate affairs
Tumblr's headquarters were at 770 Broadway in New York City. The company also maintains a support office in Richmond, Virginia. As of 1 June 2017[update], Tumblr had 411 employees. Tumblr (and Automattic) now has a mostly distributed workforce, with a small office in San Francisco.
The company's logo is set in Bookman Old Style with some modifications.
Funding
As of 2011[update], Tumblr had received about $125 million of funding from investors. The company has raised funding from Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital, Martín Varsavsky, John Borthwick (Betaworks), Fred Seibert, Krum Capital, and Sequoia Capital (among other investors).
In its first round of funding in October 2007, Tumblr raised $750,000 from Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures. In December 2008 the company raised $4.5 million in Series B funding and a further $5 million in April 2010. In December 2010, Tumblr raised $30 million in Series D funding. The company had an $800 million valuation in August 2011. In September 2011, the company raised $85 million in a round of funding led by Greylock Partners and Insight Venture Partners.
Revenue sources
In an interview with Nicole Lapin of Bloomberg West on September 7, 2012, David Karp said the site was monetized by advertising. Their first advertising launch started in May 2012 after 16 experimental campaigns. Tumblr made $13 million in revenue in 2012 and hoped to make $100 million in 2013. Tumblr reportedly spent $25 million to fund operations in 2012.
In 2013, Tumblr began allowing companies to pay to promote their own posts to a larger audience. Tumblr Head of Sales, Lee Brown, has quoted the average ad purchase on Tumblr to be nearly six figures. Tumblr also allows premium theme templates to be sold for use by blogs.
In July 2016, advertisements were implemented by default across all blogs. Users may opt-out, and the service stated that a revenue sharing program would be implemented at a later date.
In February 2022, Tumblr launched an ad-free subscription option that removes the marketing from microblogs for $5 per month, or $40 per year.
During an AMA on 11 July 2023, the CEO said that Tumblr was financially in the red, losing $30 million a year.
Notable matters
On October 21, 2011, then-U.S. President Barack Obama created a Tumblr account.
See also
In Spanish: Tumblr para niños
- Comparison of microblogging and similar services
- Comparison of free blog hosting services
- List of social networking services
