The micro-blogging platform Tumblr has officially announced its one billionth post, a huge milestone for the New York-based website that was founded just three years ago.
In a blog post, founder David Karp left the usual ‘thank you’ note, but it’s clear that even he didn’t expect Tumblr to be successful in the short span of time. After all, the ‘post count’ section on the Tumblr ‘About’ page didn’t have room for 10 digits.
There are currently about 7.2 million Tumblr users that generate over 5.2 million posts a day, reports TechCrunch; and with its app for Android just released, the number will probably grow as users take advantage of mobile uploads.
So what is it about the blogging platform that makes it so popular? Somewhere between a Twitter feed and Facebook posts, Tumblr manages to appear short and succinct, yet flexible enough for long posts.
Like Twitter, users can choose to follow select blogs—and there are thousands upon thousands of ‘themed’ ones—and read updates all on one page, the Dashboard.
Even old media giants like Newsweek and The New Yorker have gotten in on the act with their own Tumblr accounts.
But the beauty of the network is its ‘reblogging’ function—a simple, elegant way to share content with friends. Click the ‘reblogging’ icon at the top of each post and it gets routed to your own Tumblr feed, complete with a link crediting the original source. It’s through this function that Tumblr brands itself as “The easiest way to blog”.
This gives Tumblr a higher retention rate compared to, say, Twitter. Various articles have put the former at 85%, while Twitter users seem to be quick quitters, with only a 40% retention rate.
But it’s not all sunshine and roses. The ‘reblogging economy’ has been treated as something of a blight by steadfast long-form writers.
Just copy-and-pasting others’ work, they seem to say, doesn’t constitute creativity or, in the Newsweek and other ‘established-media-on-blogs’ cases, journalism.
In an example, this blogger highlights the Tumblr blogs set up by print media publications and who they follow. It's an illuminating read that goes beyond surface content and into what 'drives' these blogs.
The (un)surprising find? All these blogs seem to coexist in some digital ecosystem—The Huffington Post Tumblr reblogs the content of its subsidiaries; The New Yorker reblogs its own staff writers; and there’s just so much back-patting going on, echoing endlessly through the blogosphere that there’s bound to be an ear-piercing feedback shriek soon.
Or maybe not; you can't really argue against those one billion posts.
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