Tumbling to the top…The Rise of Tumblr

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Tumblr took the digital and social media world by storm in 2011, and its success shows no signs of diminishing.

Until last year, the only people who had heard of the trendy micro-blogging platform that is Tumblr probably either worked in social media or knew someone who owned a fixed-gear bike and wore woven sweaters to complement their Buddy Holly specs. In other words, Tumblr was the domain of hipsters and ‘industry’ people until relatively.

And then it exploded. Figuratively speaking, of course…

In fact, Tumblr had enjoyed a steady four years of growth prior to 2011, when it suddenly seemed like everyone in the Western world decided to start a Tumblr for their New Year’s resolution.

As we surge into 2012, we can see just how far Tumblr has come in the last 12 months. For one thing, it more than quadrupled its page views from December 2010 to December 2011, going from 3 billion to 14 billion.

But why the incredible success? In a world in which we’re hardly short of blogs or blogging platforms, how has Tumblr has achieved such exponential success?

 We’ve got a few theories…

It’s simpler, cleaner, more streamlined

2011 was the year everyone looked at the multitude of social media platforms and social networking tools they worked with and got a little overwhelmed. Our Google Readers filled up quicker than ever with all the blogs and sites users needed to keep up with, Facebook kept changing the format and if we entered our ‘profile details’ into one more system we were going to throw up.

The beauty of Tumblr is that it can be whatever you want it to be without being everything everyone else wants it to be. It’s a more streamlined way of publishing your content. For the same reasons that Google + struggled a bit in 2011, Tumblr thrived.

Third-party apps

We’re not talking blogging apps or plugins, but apps that stand completely apart (usually) from the blogging scene. The likes of Instagram are easily integrated with Tumblr, which means the creating/editing/sharing/publishing process can happen much faster and simpler. Not to mention the fact that Tumblr has set itself apart in terms of Smartphone usability, which means it’s the platform of choice for those on the go.

Because of the ever-increasing amount of traffic to Tumblr, founder and CEO David Karp has been forced to make some big back-end improvements. In September 2011, Tumblr raised $85 million at an $800 million valuation, which will presumably go towards making said changes.

With a solid financial backing and a growth rate that doesn’t appear to be slowing, we’re expecting big things from Tumblr in 2012. Watch this space.

 

A Tick Yes digital and social media blog