Tumblr

Tumblr is a place to share things online.

You can post words and pictures. You can also share videos.

People use tags to find posts. A tag is a special word. It helps you find things like art. You can also use tags to talk.

Users can follow other blogs. This lets you see their new posts. You can like or comment on them. It is a way to stay connected.

Tumblr is a social media site. It lets people make short blogs.

David Karp started Tumblr in 2007. He worked with Marco Arment to build it. Many people use it to share art, videos, and text. You can see posts from people you follow on a dashboard. This dashboard is a live feed of new things. You can also use tags to find posts. A tag is a special word like #art. Users also use tags to talk. They add comments in the tags to share opinions.

Tumblr has had many owners. Yahoo! bought it in 2013 for $1.1 billion. Later, a company called Verizon owned it. In 2019, a new company named Automattic bought Tumblr. The sale price was less than $3 million. Automattic also runs WordPress.com. Today, Tumblr is working on new ways to connect. It may use a tool called ActivityPub. This tool helps different social networks talk to each other.

Tumblr is a social media platform used for microblogging. This means people can create short blogs to share many things.

Users can post text, images, videos, and even quotes. One of the main tools is called a dashboard. The dashboard is a live feed of recent posts from blogs you follow. You can use it to like or comment on posts. You can also reblog things to share them with your own followers. This makes it a very social place to find new content.

There are many ways to organize and find things on the site. Users use tags to help others find specific topics. A tag is a word starting with a hashtag, like #art. The site indexes the first 20 tags on a post. People use descriptive tags to say what is in a photo. Some users also use tags for personal commentary or opinions. This lets them share thoughts without changing the original post.

You can also set a queue to schedule posts for later.

David Karp started Tumblr in 2007. He worked with a developer named Marco Arment to build it. They wanted to create a place for short-form blogs. Within two weeks of launching, the site had 75,000 users. In 2012, the brand Adidas worked with Tumblr for an advertising campaign. Later, Yahoo! bought the company in 2013. They paid $1.1 billion in cash for the service. This was a huge moment in the history of the platform.

Ownership of Tumblr has changed several times over the years. After Yahoo!, the company Verizon Communications took over in 2017. During this time, the site faced some hard jobs. In 2019, Tumblr introduced stricter rules for adult content. This caused a drop in user traffic. In August 2019, a company called Automattic bought Tumblr. The sale price was less than $3 million. This was much less than the original price Yahoo! paid.

Automattic also runs the blog service WordPress.com.

Today, Tumblr continues to grow and change with new technology. Many users belong to Generation Z. In fact, they make up 61% of new users. The company is working on using a protocol called ActivityPub. This is a way for different social networks to talk to each other. Automattic is also moving the site to a new backend architecture. They say this will help them share code with WordPress.com. Users should not notice a big difference in how the site looks.

Tumblr is a social media and microblogging platform. Microblogging is a way to create short-form blogs to share various types of media.

Users can post text, images, videos, quotes, and links to their personal blogs. The platform is known for its unique social culture and progressive views. It serves as a space where people connect through shared interests and multimedia content. This allows for a highly visual and interactive social experience.

The platform functions through several core mechanisms that help users manage content. The dashboard is the primary tool for most users. It acts as a live feed showing recent posts from blogs that a person follows. From the dashboard, users can comment on, reblog, or like posts. Reblogging allows a user to share someone else's content with their own followers. Users can also upload new content directly from the dashboard with a single click. Some users even connect their blogs to social accounts like Twitter or Facebook to share updates automatically.

Tumblr offers many specialized features to help users organize and customize their experience. A queue allows users to schedule posts to appear over several hours or days. Tags help audiences find specific topics by using hashtags, such as #art. The site indexes the first 20 tags added to any post. Users employ two main types of tagging: descriptive tagging and commentary tagging. Descriptive tags explain what is in a post so it can be searched. Commentary tags allow users to share opinions or reactions without changing the original post's appearance.

Customization is another major part of the Tumblr experience. Users can use HTML, a coding language, to edit the theme of their blogs. This allows for custom themes that can be shared or even sold. Some users also use custom domains to give their blogs unique web addresses. The platform has also expanded into mobile technology. It launched an official iPhone app in 2009 after acquiring Tumblerette. It later released apps for Android, BlackBerry, and even Google Glass.

The history of Tumblr involves several major changes in ownership and value. David Karp and developer Marco Arment founded the platform in 2007. It grew very quickly, gaining 75,000 users within its first two weeks. In 2013, Yahoo! acquired Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash. However, the company struggled to meet advertising goals. In 2016, Yahoo! wrote down $712 million of the platform's value. Verizon Communications later acquired Yahoo! and placed Tumblr under its Oath subsidiary in 2017.

Ownership shifted again in 2019 when Verizon sold Tumblr to Automattic. Automattic is the company that operates WordPress.com. The sale price was less than $3 million, which was less than 0.3% of the original Yahoo! purchase price.

Under Automattic, the company has focused on core functionality and streamlining features. In 2024, Automattic announced it would migrate the backend to an architecture derived from WordPress. This change aims to ease development and code sharing between the two platforms. They stated that users would not notice a difference in their experience.

Tumblr has seen significant shifts in its user base and content policies. In 2019, the site introduced stricter restrictions on adult content. This led to a 30% loss in user traffic according to Similarweb estimates. Despite these struggles, the platform has seen a resurgence among younger users. Members of Generation Z make up 48% of active users and 61% of new users.

The site has hosted over 465 million blogs and 172 billion posts in total.

Looking forward, Tumblr is integrating with newer social technologies. In late 2022, Automattic announced support for the ActivityPub protocol. This is a decentralized social networking protocol that allows different platforms to interact. The company plans to unlock full ActivityPub access once its technical migration is complete. This connects Tumblr to a broader system of interconnected social networks. This move represents a shift toward a more open and decentralized internet structure.